Customer Reviews

PHP 5 Fast & Easy Web Development

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

 

 

This is an "ok" book for web developers. It has some nice features if you can get past the amount of errors in the coded examples and the sometimes confusing and contradictory explanations. There is very little discussion of basic concepts, therefore, I would not recommend this book for anyone who does not have some programming background.
The title, PHP 5 fast & easy web development, is indicative of the book's contents. It provides a series of potentially useful PHP scripts that you can adapt to develop database interactive web pages (emphasis is on the MySQL database). However, like the 2nd edition of Julie Meloni's "PHP fast & easy web development," this book is plagued with coding errors which are not only annoying, but also make understanding the various features of PHP more difficult.
The book starts with instructions on how to install PHP, Apache and MySQL. The remainder of the book consists of a series of increasingly complex scripts, detailed step-by-step. For the first half of the book, the examples are relatively easy to read and carefully documented. However, halfway through the book, segments of code begin to appear without adequate explanation, and as the book progresses, it becomes more a cookbook of code to retype rather than a clear explanation of what the code mean. Instructions about where to insert new lines of code are difficult to follow. In addition, some explanations appear contradictory, which adds to the confusion. The errors in the coded examples are excessive. I can understand a few typos, but lines of code that are substantially different or are missing completely can be found in every chapter. This is unacceptable and unprofessional in a book that is supposed to help you learn a new programming language.

This book is a descent introduction to PHP. It covered a lot of useful topics including sending email, file system functions, cookies/sessions and MySQL connections. The largest project in the book was a simple content management system. Even though basic programming concepts are covered as well I think it still helps to have at least a little familiarity with programming or scripting.

I only spotted a few minor errors throughout the book. For the most part all the examples worked smoothly. I did have some difficulties with the first three chapters in the book. These chapters dealt with installing PHP and MySQL. Many of the steps just didn't work as explained.

At 500 plus pages and 25 chapters it is a pretty long book and does cover a lot of material. Still, it doesn't seem to go to deep into the details of most of the covered material. There is a great appendix that helps with this somewhat. But because of the low price and since this book is only an introduction I can still easily recommend it. It's actually used as a textbook for one of the local Colleges.

This book is very problematic in the fact that, despite the author's claim of "three or four technical reviewers", there are coding problems which could have been easily caught by testing the code.

For example code given on pages 89-90 for a script generate errors abut undefined variables and . I double checked my code against the book and found no differences. I downloaded the source code from the author's web page and used that and received the same errors.

The author's website also makes it clear that she is somwhat unreceptive to these errors being pointed out when I went to the site advertised for her to see if there were any corrections and such. She does not even provide a means to contact her and from the tone of her "Contact Information" page, she does not take to kindly to being called on the carpet.

This book is definitely a work in progress and should not be purchased by anyone wanting to actually learn PHP.

I went through this entire book and was quite impressed. After reading the reviews on how people didn't learn PHP using this book, I have come to the conclusion that they are mentally handicapped. This book is straight forward and gives you plenty of examples on how to manipulate MySQL databases and how to use php syntax and how to integrate it into your site. It covers cookies, sessions, and other VERY useful super globals. The book contains minor errata, like all text books, but these errors are easily noticed and fixed (ie missing semicolon). If you copy the code exactly and you dont bother to read about the concept of what you are doing I can see how you might not be able to learn, BUT if you actually read the book you will learn from this book! From this book I have been able to write my own database for a user authentication, forms, message boards, and much more! This book rocks my socks.

My college decided to use this book, I am not sure the director even read the book, it is absolutely horrible. I am a comp sci major, I have at least close to 40+ books on PHP, this one is the absolute most worthless piece of junk their is. It is seriously full of code, it does not teach best practices, it does not explain the code, it just shows the code and you type to see if it works, there is no explanation as to why the code is being written like it is, it does not show any planning process for the project you are going to do.

It does not ever mention anything about security. It is just all out horrible. I am good at programming and have previous knowledge of PHP, so if I look carefully at the code I can pick out the logic, but other people are having problems, and I do not feel most people will learn anything from this book other than a lesson on coping code and playing with it to see what happens

I have a few books I am going to fully review and suggest the college go with anything other than this. This book really does a poor job of even properly explaining or introducing PHP.

I bought this book hoping to be able todo basic things with PHP 5 and learn the basics of the language, at first it started out fine until i hit the sectin on using variable from there the book is horrid syntax errors that just repeat I don't know how someone couldnt catch them ( does the company and publisher even test the code ? ) thanks to everyone in ##php on irc.debian.net i was able to walk through the next few pages coirecting well over 12 errors in one script and there is no erratta for this on the comapnies site. i started reading again and once again errors in the section on variables from forms
this book is very poorly written I want to sell it but i wouldnt wish this book on my worst enemy please for your own good stay away ive been in the IT field and a linux user for 7 years this book is just horrible and confussing after page 70

I highly recomend this book to anyone that has no experience in PHP or MySQl and has a desire to learn both. This book's step by step chapters makes it easy to learn and use PHP. Before I was done with this book I was already coding my own PHP/MySQL programs and rewriting open-source PHP programs like PHP-Nuke and phpBB among others. This book is an excelent buy at any price!

Using this book and a few choice websites, I was able to create my very own PHP/MySQL driven website for users to sell books.

I highly recommend this book for anyone looking to learn PHP that have *some* programming experience

This book had some errors in it...just typos if you want to call. But hey overall it was a good book.

I just wish it covered a little bit more on the MySQL unit, such as database normalization. I already know how to do it but just for others sake the book should have covered that more.

I also feel the same way about the Object Oriented Programming part. That should have been an entire chapter. Because the major change in PHP 5 is the concepts of OOP in the new PHP 5.

Thats all!

Rashaud Teague
CEO, RDR Vision

This book starts great with step by step instructions to get going on installing a WAMP/LAMP evironment and creating a DB, but then the author hits the turbo button and creating your first table involves loops, counts, subsets, if/else, and other programming techniques with very little description of what or why....more of a "ohh, put this here" rather than a detailed explanation. For a beginner, I feel like this book will force memorization rather than understanding.