Customer Reviews

PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this book 3 months ago and really enjoyed it. The book does teach you the basic of how to build dynamic pages, connect to a database, and security. However, i would not recommend it to professionals simply because it doesn't use the stands that everyone else is using such as object oriented programming (OOP).

After reading this, i turned to the online community for extra info but found myself trapped as most tutorials and examples use OOP (which is the core of php).

If you're a beginner looking to build your first SIMPLE dynamic website, this book is for you but if you're a professional looking to enhance your site, i would skip this book.

First let me state that my comments refer to the Second Edition (June 2005).

I would agree with many of the other reviewers of this fine book in saying, look no further if you are looking for a completely accessible introductory text on PHP and MySQL.

I teach Internet Programming at the college level and have read through many PHP/MySQL books. I feel very confident in stating that you will not find a better value in an introductory PHP/MySQL text anywhere.

The author manages to take you from an absolute introduction to some fairly advanced topics. Even after teaching from this book I have no complaints or negative comments. The writing is clear and concise, the code examples are wonderful (all work and are available from the companion website), and the organization (and selection) of the topics covered is excellent (see the Table of Contents link above). The students in my class unanimously agreed this was a great text/reference.

My real motivation for writing this review is to, in some small way, thank the author, Larry Ullman, for writing this perfect textbook for my class. So, thank you Larry Ullman!

If you are shopping for beginner-to-intermediate book look no further, you will be VERY happy with this book.

Don't know about you out there, but I hate reading boring long theoretical technical texts. i also didn't come from programming background, but IT networking/security. This book was absolutely great for these reasons:

1. no long page upon page babbling by author
2. real hands on action oriented tasks with quick exciting results
3. minimal text, maximum practice with excellent explanations
4. integration of PHP with MySQL for optimal value and practical world
5. Downloadable scripts to validate against your work for accuracy
6. All chapters and hands-on work are aligned to the most frequently
encountered practical real world needs, to plug-n-play for your web
site [...]

As an experienced php developer, I found this book to be very solid for those who already have a clue about both MySQL and php. In spite that the author tried to introduce both thoroughly, if you don't have an idea as to how programming/scripting languages work, you might find yourself a bit at odds with what the author is explaining.
As already mentioned by another reviewer, the book completely igonores php5's OO-model which is a bastion of php5.
Nonetheless, I think this is one of the best books I've read that goes a long way to introduce and expand upon the symbiotic relationship between php and MySQL. Very good, solid book if you are novice/intermediate or advanced developer looking for a handy reference. Good, knowledgeable author.

I purchased this book having absolutely zero PHP or MySQL experience. I had just finished reading a book on HTML and CSS (my only coding experience by the way) with the intention of creating a dynamic web site but first needed to learn how to do it.

Larry's book was EXTREMELY HELPFUL in teaching a total beginner such as myself how to read, write and understand PHP and MySQL scripts. Not only are the scripts and exercises in the book easy to learn, they are also incredibly practical and transferable in terms of customizing for use on personal projects. There are all kinds of wonderful scripts that can be reused hundreds of times once they have been written.

By far, one of the greatest things about this book, is that the author, Larry Ullman has an online forum which he moderates and personally answers questions from all the people who have purchased one of his many books.

I have not read any of Larry's other books yet, but I can honestly say that his teaching style in this one is absolutely fantastic and I would highly recommend it to anyone with a desire to learn PHP and MySQL!!!

I give this book 100 stars!!!

I have had this book lying around the office for about a year, but never opened it because I program with Coldfusion, not php. But recently I have been working with a MySQL database and needed to read up on it. I had already read "Teach yourself MySQL in 10 minutes a day" and found that to be a bit confusing. I don't think it lays enough groundwork. So I thought, what the heck I'll read the chapters on MySQL in this book. They were excellent! The author lays the groundwork and gets you up to speed in just two chapters. The book is worth the price for just the sections on MySQL.

I'm a professional programmer but was new to Php and MySql. This book answered all my questions and allowed me to create a sophisticated php page with a database backend in just a couple weeks. I designed my page layout and then just worked on it as I read the book learning the needed techniques. He covers everything I needed. You can't go wrong with this book.

One of the other readers provided a glowing review of this book. I can only second those thoughts.

Having spent 2 years working on learning PHP and MySQL and having purchased 5 other books on PHP-MySQL, I can say without a doubt that Larry Ullman's book is a gem, well worth buying. It may take a beginner awhile to complete the entire book, but there is no doubt that anyone with beginning to intermediate computer skills can learn PHP-MySQL from this book if you take the time.

Without listing the other books that I no longer even open, I would suggest that you put this book at the top of your choices if you are hoping to learn PHP-MySQL. It will take you well into intermediate to advanced skill levels in short order. Congratulations to Mr. Ullman. (P.S., I have no conflict of interest and decided to write this review because I was so impressed with the book).

I've been creating web pages with HTML and CSS for several years. First as a diversion, then for work, friends, etc. I had the need to use a data base for a project. I bought a couple of books and stumbled through it with PHP and MYSQL. Never really "got it" just got through it.

When I picked this book up it HAD STUFF IN IT I NEEDED! It helped me do the things I needed to do in the real world. I'm not a full time web developer, and this book helped me understand the code and how it works.

I would say it is a GREAT buy for the new to moderate user.

I really wanted an O'Reilly book covering PHP and PostgreSQL since that's the format of reference I prefer. I have several years of web-development under my belt in perl, ASP and Javascript and am now starting a project migrating an ASP & MS SQL Server site over to PHP and PostgreSQL. I say this so you can take my review in context.

What this book does very well is review, review, review. I believe as a beginner's walk-through of PHP and MySQL, this would be an excellent choice. But I would caution experienced programmers who prefer reference texts or want to jump into advanced concepts. I suspect you'll find that php.net's documentation and some example scripts easily found on the Internet will get you started.

The money I spent on this book served as the impetus to get me started. The book provided the framework and answered some basic questions about PHP: Does it support sessions? Yes. Cookies? Here's how. How do I connect to a database? Something like this, here are some URLs of other examples. And so on. However, because it's a learning text with a heavy review format, it takes a lot of scanning and parsing to find what you are looking for if you are not willing to follow along with each example's laborious construction.

On the one hand, this is probably the only PHP book I'll buy and in that regard, it was a success. On the other hand, I almost wish I had saved my money and just dug into php.net instead. Hence the three-star rating and warning for experienced web-devs.

But if you are a beginner and don't have a concept of variable handling, sessions, cookies or how to connect to databases, this is a sure bet.