PHP Black Book [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

by Peter Moulding (Author) "Welcome to PHP. If you currently program in any other scripting language, you are about to enjoy the world's best scripting language for Web sites..." (more)
Key Phrases: session logger, yaz connect, end element handler, Bell Labs, Visual Basic, Creating Text (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
The PHP Black Book is a complete and indispensable reference to the PHP open source scripting language version 4. Embedded in HTML documents, PHP scripts create active server pages. This cross-platform book covers the language syntax, standard library, and integration with various databases including open source databases such as PostreSQL and MySQL. Explores issues such as internationalization, XML integration, and LDAP.

About the Author
Peter Moulding (Sydney, Australia) has 25 years of experience building what are now called Web sites on mainframes, minis, and micro systems as a business owner, technical manager, and developer. He has been using PHP since version 2.

Product Details

• Paperback: 880 pages
• Publisher: Coriolis Group Books (October 11, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1588800539
• ISBN-13: 978-1588800534
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,515,003 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Easy to read and easy to follow even for a beginner like me., October 30, 2001

By	Carolyn (Sutherland) - See all my reviews

I read one of the authors articles about PHP and decided
to use PHP instead of ASP. I also decided to buy any book he wrote as the articles are so good. A few chapters on
HTML from another book were enough to start building web pages then I started reading the PHP Black Book. Each chapter seems to be complete so I can pick my way through the chapters I need and skip the ones I do not need. You only need about 5 of the 20 chapters to build a web site with a database and forms.

Windows is covered so I do not need to learn Unix.

MySQL is a useful database that has a whole chapter. I did not know you could use open source software like MySQL on Windows until I read that chapter. The database does what I want so I will skip the chapter on other databases.

Everybody says I need this and that for my web site. All the thises and thats are in the book. He explains SQL, XML, LDAP, IMAP, and and how to draw graphics straight from a web page script. I will use that to make my database results in to pictures.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent work by an excellent author, December 3, 2001

By	Arman Galstyan (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have studied php black book after i covered several other php books, extensive articles, tutorials etc. best of all? no doubt php black book is the best among what i saw about php. it goes into every details your emagination can think of while always concluding everything in immediate solution sections found in every chapter, gives extended examples and addresses real world issues. In addition, i had a problem with one of my php aplications and after posting the issue at several of the best known php forums decided to write to Peter; the author of php black book though it was not really his issue. the answer arrived within hours. Peter complitly anwered to all of my question writing more than 10 emails back to me, described the issues i was encounting, came up with solutions and much more. i strongly suggest php black book as your study source in php universe.

With Regards
Arman Galstyan
eNotalone.com inc.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Definitely not the book for me, October 31, 2002

By	Kenneth McDowell (Farmington, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This book belongs in the bargain shelf, which is where I found it recently at the local Borders. I paid ... for it brand new, drastically reduced from ....

The largest problems I had were: missing example code, incorrect code, missing critical information, and too much author ballyhooing. Also, the included CD did not work, it was corrupt.

In numerous instances, the author builds from one concept to the next, adding in more complex capabiilites. Unfortunately, the author often fails to provide the complete resultant code, leaving the reader to attempt at guessing at the correct code. Case in point...page 347...no print function is given. Thus the preceding code examples are useless if you do not have the experience to figure it out, which I didn't.

Incorrect code...some of the stuff that is in here is just plain wrong. Copied verbatim from the pages, the code just flat out does not work.

Missing Information: The chapters explain about 75% of what you need to know to be successful. Missing info, for example, in the email and form sections makes the chapters incomprehensible. There is nothing to bring them together to use forms and emailing together. I had to go online to get these concepts and required code and config changes to make it work.

Lastly, the author spends a lot of time making jokes, which is fine, if your work is absolutely complete and accurate. The humor becomes more droll as the mistakes and errors pile up.

Lastly, Coriolis is apparently no longer in business. When I found out the CD was corrupt, I immediately emailed the "email address" in the book for assistance, possibly to get a new CD. In short order I got an email error message back stating the email address ... did not exist. I then browsed to ... Nothing. After a Google search on "Coriolis Group", I finally found the news that this company no longer exists, and is now under the control of some cheezy-named publishing company, supposedly the original two guys are now back in charge. I don't know the gory details about the company politics, but their "new" website is beyond boring, and offered no help for us trying to make heads nor tails over this book.

To make a long story short, don't buy this book. There are too many other great resources out there.