Customer Reviews

PHP Essentials (Prima Tech Linux Series)

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I disagree with the reviews that say this book is only for beginners. I am a PHP newbie, but code ASP for my day job, so I understand the basic concept. But since I am a visual learner, I find step-by-step examples much more helpful than a big paragraph going over the theory behind something. PHP Essentials is great for me in that respect. Yes, some of the html stuff is pretty basic, but it doesn't take up the bulk of the book! Besides, you can just skim those parts. The only reason I don't give the book five stars is that I have yet to find the be-all, end-all tech book that warrants it. It's very rare to find books that are timely, comprehensive, and useful day-to-day. But PHP Essentials isn't supposed to be the grand bible of PHP either.

I've also read some of the Wrox Professional books, but find them less useful because of the reason I stated before. Lots of text, few examples, so that I have to look elsewhere anyway just to find something specific. For me, it's usually a waste of [money].

The nice thing about PHP is that it's very well documented, which is to everyone's advantage. For [this purchase price] and a few hundred pages, PHP Essentials shows you just enough to get your feet wet. Most books, including some Wrox books, are one-thousand-page doorstops with information that becomes obsolete rather quickly.

If you're new to PHP but not new to the web, and you learn by example, PHP Essentials can be a very helpful intro. But if you prefer more text in your tech book, then by all means drop your money elsewhere. I think it's nice to have the choice.

I recently bought this book as a quick primer for an office project and i must say it was a refreshing read. Having spent the last 8 months learning javascript from various confusing and muddled sources, the intro to PHP here made me feel as if I'd bumped my head and web development suddenly crytallized! The instructions were clear, concise and nearly too well meaning. The code examples helped me to quickly apply my c knowledge and reinvigorate the otherwise dead office project for which I had purchased the book. The helpful appendix of essential functions was pretty much a bonus "pocket"-type reference. Also, the book opened my eyes to the power of MySQl and the ease with which PHP connects to it. I just finished a 8-week MCSD prep course, yet I didnt feel comfortable with SQL. This book went a long way toward making me feel at ease creating and manipulating with SQL. Looks like I wont be bothering to spend (waste) any more time trying to get my SQL Server 7.0 to operate reliably on a daily basis!

I have every possible book on PHP and MySQL in my library. I bought them as a newbie trying to learn PHP programming with no experience in programming other than HTML. They will ALL be sitting on the shelf for a while now that I found Php Essentials. It is clear and easy to understand. The author explains the why's as well as the how's so that a beginner can understand everything without trying to guess what is meant by ambiguous statements... which has been my biggest complaint about the rest of the books on this topic. I'll be pulling out Professional Php Programming from time to time and I'll be checking in with MySQL (OTHER NEW RIDERS) as I proceed but PHP Essentials is laying a good foundation to build on.

PHP essentials is a very good book. It is well written and easy to understand. However, if you do not have any programming experience, such as Perl, this is not the best one to get started. If you do have some experience in programming and understands how the web actually works, this book is excellent to develop your programming skills.

I have a Perl background and use flat text file as a database. I wanted to transfer my entire site on PHP as a language and MySQL as a database system. Therefore, I purchased this book and a MySQL book and now, I am home free. Julie Meloni uses simple examples to help you learn PHP and you can actually build and manage your database, simply by reading this book. I strongly recommend this book and buying a MySQL book to go along with it.

Finally, although this book has a favorite database system covered, MySQL, it does support other database systems such as SQL, Oracle, etc... If you want to use PHP with a database system, this is the book to get.

I read the reviews of the Professional PHP Programming book, and noted a lot of people said there were typos in that book, even though it was very good otherwise. As a PHP novice, I cannot afford to muddle through a typo-ridden book. So I looked at Web Applications With PHP 4, and that book was so advanced that the *first* chapter is titled "Advanced PHP" -- no install guide or anything else.

This book, PHP Essentials, is geared toward not only PHP newbies, but also people who have never programmed anything in any language. That's a little bit basic even for me, as I do at least know Perl and JavaScript. But it looked better that the first two books I tried, so I bought it.

I don't regret buying it. It is written in such a simple, friendly manner, that I was able to breeze through the first half in about an hour. If you're good at HTML, and you're looking to get into programming, this may be just what you need. This book will teach you, in basic terms, how to create if-else statements, what the proper syntax is for PHP code, how it integrates into the HTML page, what variables are, how to capture form data and write it to a file or database, how to send email from a Web page, how to send HTTP headers (so you can set cookies and do redirects), and it will step you through building a shopping cart system.

Now, if that were it, this book would be a five star book. However, being that I do have some programming background, and did have some idea of what PHP could do, let me tell you why I gave it four stars instead of five. First, there are some technical inaccuracies, such as the statement that Netscape 3+ supports style sheets (Netscape 3 has zero support, it's only Netscape 4+). But that's not bad. Second, nowhere does she address the "gasp, mixing HTML and code" programming debate. And finally, as another reviewer said, this book really is just the essentials, and I think it's not even that. Because there is a whopping omission: how to create a file that pulls in other files, like Server Side Includes. While the book covers how to open a file and read/write to it, the book never goes into detail about just linking in a file. This is important, because it's a fundamental feature. In fact, PHP has two commands for doing it, and neither one is mentioned, not even in the commands listed in the appendix.

So, if you're new to PHP and new to programming in general, this is a good -- great -- introductory book. You could learn the basics of programming with this book, and put yourself into a better paying job! But if you have some programming background, or even some PHP background, this book isn't going to feel very thorough.

I didn't heed the first review carefully enough. This book really is for beginner's ONLY. If the only coding you've done is to write an HTML web page in notepad, then this book may be for you. It is an excellent book for anyone who has not done any programming in PERL, JAVA, JavaScript, or C. But if you've managed to write a few lines of code, especially if you've done some PERL cgi scripts, "Professional PHP Programming" by Wrox press is much, much better. In fact "Professional PHP Programming" is so well written, clear, and repeats itself often enough, that it may be just as good for beginner's. It certainly can capture a wide audience, from intelligent newbie to professional level.

I gave this book only 2 stars because I think most everyone who has stumbled onto the importance of PHP at this time should buy the Wrox book instead. However, if PHP dwarfs the visibility of PERL in the cgi realm by next year, this book may have more of an audience. It is certainly an easy, pleasant, and nice read.

This is not a book for programmers. Quotes like "Commenting your code is a good habit to have," (pg.33) bring chills to a professional programmer (of course you comment your code!). The book is a one-hour read for anyone ever to write in a scripting language and covers, lightly, many topics in php programming including authentication and encryption. To write "production" PHP you'll need a meatier reference book. Overpriced for a cursory introduction to php.

As a PHP newbie, but professional C++/Java/EJB programmer, I was really disappointed by this book mainly because it complitely ommits the Object Oriented (OO) aspects of PHP as well as common code reusability principles which are very important when building dynamic web sites. If you look for a reference for accessing particular aspects of PHP such as sessions, database access and so on, this book is for you, but if you want to go beyond and planning to use PHP professionally, you should buy another book.

I bought this book on reading the glowing reviews that were written here, needless to say, I won't make the same mistake again.

At first glance the book appears to be a good introduction to PHP. But once you get really stuck into it, the omissions and inaccuracies are apparent. Many of the examples in the book don't even run due to typos and missed ; and { } - This is not exactly reassuring to the learner.

Perhaps more importantly than even these errors though is the fact that the book skips over important issues, and remains too simplistic, even in the supposedly "advanced" concepts. Anything interesting is shrugged off as "beyond the scope of this book". Huge areas of the PHP language are omitted.

The other complaint I have with this book is the truly awful programming style it teaches. Prefering to use huge great chunks of "IF...THEN" fragments instead of teaching proper code structure. The style taught here makes PHP seem very unsophisticated. No room at all is spent on teaching users how to use function calls to make code easier to manage.

On a final note, something a bit more sinister is that huge parts of the book appear to be copied off of the webmonkey site, almost word for word, same exact code in the examples, just changing a word here or there....Or did webmonkey plagarise the book? Mysterious indeed....

I would advise against buying this book if you want a good serious guide to the PHP language.

Additional Note: The book quite often refers to websites with code downloads, fixes and upgrades which simply just dont exist.

This Book is very good! When I opened the book I knew almost nothing about php except some commands I got from php.net manual. This book is a very good start for a developer, it explains a lot about mysql use etc. The problem with this book its just too easy, I mean I have learned everything in this book I could find that's needed and I can see its not enough. Yet this book is still very good because it doesn't throw at you some terminology you have no idea about. I'm thinking right now to get more advanced book on php, and I'd recommend the same to others! If you think of learning PHP this is ONE GOOD BOOK TO START FROM!