Customer Reviews

PHP 5 Advanced: Visual QuickPro Guide

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've been reading Larry's books since back in the early days when php/mysql books were barely found. I have to credit Larry's books with helping me just get started learning about php & mysql, and even helping me with most of what I learn today. I've purchased every new version of his books and pick up new things every time. It's so easy to step along with the examples, to help provide a solid understanding, and to give a fresh reassurance of what I may have already known... plus I always learn new tricks and techniques. I guess that's why I keep getting his books. This book especially helped me with a few tricks just at the right time, right when I needed help with them. I have over twenty-five php books and his are all in the top of my favorites and most referenced to.

While not quite as good as its predecessor (PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Websites 2nd edition) in terms of readability and ease of understanding, Larry Ullman is still, with this book, miles in front of pretty much any other technical author I have read. The chapters on object oriented programming are certainly the best I have come across on the subject.

There is also a quick but useful demo of how to put a bit of AJAX in to a PHP site to increase usability.

The one thing missing from this book that I personally would like to have seen, would be an introduction to frameworks.

But let me stress this point: Larry Ullman is the best technical author, by a long, long way, on any subject I have ever read about in my life. I just wish he was an expert and wrote books on all the other things I want to learn about - that's how good his teaching ability is.

This book is a great continuation of the PHP5 Visual Quickstart Guide by the same company "Peachpit press). They stay with the same learning style that they have in the other books (visual and doing) but go into more advanced operations.

I got this book because I have two of Larry Ullman's other books: PHP 5 and MySQL 4.1 for Dynamic Websites and the updated PHP 6 and MySQL 5 for Dynamic Websites. It seemed natural for me to turn to this book to learn about advanced PHP topics, particularly since I wanted to learn about PHP object-oriented programming.

As with his other books that I own, Larry Ullman's explanation and examples are very simple and easy to understand, particularly when it came to learning about object-oriented programming. He starts you off with a basic understanding of object-oriented programming, and then advances you to advanced object-oriented programming, and then finishes it off with a real world example in creating a shopping cart for an e-commerce website. What's beautiful is that in the previous chapters, he had you create a shopping cart in the procedural programming style. Now you can compare and see the difference in procedural programming versus object-oriented programming on the same type of application you are building. I tried reading other books and websites on PHP object-oriented programming, but none of them clicked with me as they had complex examples and their explanations weren't clear. This book really nailed it for me and I am now writing and working with object-oriented PHP code.

On the back cover, it also mentions that there are bonus e-chapters about creating PDF's with PHP and images with PHP. Unfortunately I have yet to redeem the bonus chapters from their website so I cannot comment on them.

I highly recommend this book if you want to learn about PHP object-oriented programming and to keep as a reference. There are other interesting topics in this book that I also found useful, such as security (sanitizing data), database encryption with MySQL, basic AJAX, XML/PHP, modularizing a website, and working with multidimensional arrays.

The book is very good and is the question to many answers in PHP developers head after crossing the beginners line , it saves alot of googling for tutorials solving this advanced topic , as you notice it's advanced material and by no way for beginners , if you are beginner just read his book PHP and mysql for dynamic websites , this book covers advancd topics like multidimentional arrays , recursion , Security , e-commerse , PHP OOP in three interesting chapters , chapter 6 : basic OOP , chapter 7 : advanced OOP, chapter 8 : real-world OOP , the cover networking stuff like working with Sockets , Geolocation , cURL , Then Chapter 10 illustrate compressing files , PHP-GTK environement , establishing time interval driven commands with CRON and using COM with PHP , Chapter 11 discuss in detail PHP command line interface , chapter 12 for PEAR , chapter 13 for AJAX architecture , implementation and debugging , chapter 14 for PHP and XML integration like parsing XML and programming RSS feed , Larry Ullman always surprise us with his writing quality and the ease we digest his illustration . recommended :)

I've purchased this book and PHP 6 and MySQL 5 for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide, both by Larry Ullman. They're wonderful -- with them, I took my first steps into working with databases and a language like PHP. The step by step examples have made it very easy to learn and when I've been stuck -- I've gone to Larry's site and he's answered my questions in his forum. Two of the best purchases I've ever made. Highly recommended.

Larry Ullman's PHP 6 and Mysql 5: Visual Quickstart Guide was required reading for a college course I took in Data Driven Websites. Unlike other programming books that try to liven up their dull topics with equally dull humor, Larry has a way of writing that makes learning exciting and easy to follow without having to read through hours of text diluted with painfully unfunny humor.

Also unlike other programming books, you know the exercises in his books are going to work. If you get stuck on an example, Larry provides online support for his books. Larry answers your questions and gets you back on your feet so that you can get on with learning the rest of the book.

No other author is so involved with his readers' learning.

Other great books on PHP - Visual Quickstart PHP 6 and Mysql 5, and Effortless E-commerce. All these books are must reads for anyone serious about learning PHP.

Great book!

Good example of a shopping cart and great tips on how to improve on the basic implementation of PHP in creating a web site.

I like this book so much I have to give credit to both:

(1) The author, for selecting straightforward, useful topics and presenting them clearly and cleanly. I particularly appreciate his emphasis on simplicity and practicality. Just enough concept and just enough hand-holding. I was struggling to make the leap from building haphazardly assembled web pages to an organized, modular, MVC architecture, and Chapter 2 provided an invaluable intermediate step that I have not seen in any other text. Likewise for OOP. Other books go off on verbose tangents without showing you syntax that you'll actually use. This book demonstrates just enough OOP to do anything you'll ever really need to do with objects, without dogmatically pushing you to unnecessarily objectify and wrap every piece of data in your application with layers of abstraction.
The introduction of "advanced" features, like Ajax,COM, PEAR, PECL, and several of the useful libraries therein, was also a good introduction to the deeper waters beyond a basic mastery of the PHP language fundamentals.

(2) The whole "visual quickpro" series and concept. I have dozens of other IT/programming books that are just way too heavy on text and demonstrative code snippets and lack the complete small-project approach of these quickpro books. The wrox and o'reilly books with 2 dozen authors and endless UML diagrams just don't do it for me. The quickpro two-column page layout with code and screenshots next to explanations is easily approachable. I also recommend the author's "Building a website with ajax" for the same reasons. Go through each chapter, typing and running his code as you go to make sure you internalize the concepts and syntax, then go through it again and adapt the material to your own projects. Most of the quickpro books seem to be for introductory level material. I'd like to see them cover more advanced topics with the same emphasis on succinctness and practicality.

Larry, if you read this -- please consider doing a "PHP 5 More Advanced" to cover MVC in detail and help us put some of the more useful design patterns into practice. More security related material would be cool as well. You'd have at least one buyer.

I have a handful of PHP books that I've gathered over the years, but I find myself coming back to Ullman's PHP quick start series more often than any other. Through his 3 books, PHP for the World Wide Web, Third Edition, PHP 6 and MySQL 5 for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide and PHP 5 Advanced: Visual QuickPro Guide, the author tackles a range of PHP topics, tips and techniques that will satisfy everyone from beginner to veteran. At the start of each book, he writes a snippet to explain what is covered and direct you to one of his other books if you may be above or below the level. As someone who has worked through all 3, I can honestly say that starting with the 1st book and working through the 3rd book has been very enjoyable and has expanded my knowledge of PHP greatly. Even if you are experienced with PHP and are just looking for a refresher, these books move at a pace that can satisfy everyone. I can't suggest them enough and I've even lent out these books to friends before.