Customer Reviews

PHP and MySQL Web Development, Second Edition

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

* Note: I refer here to both the first and second edition *

This is the book I purchased to get started on server-side scripting; it probably says "user-level intermediate-advanced" to avoid lawsuits; I had no prior knowledge of server-side programming, and no trouble understanding.

It is divided in four logical parts:
(1) PHP tutorial
(2) MySQL tutorial
(3) General discussion on server-side scripting & e-commerce (very interesting)
(4) Projects

This book does an excellent job at explaining PHP & MySQL to the beginner, and goes much beyond the frustrating "intermediate" level where similar books often stop. It assumes a working knowledge of HTML, which everyone interested in this book already has in all likelihood.

It is cleverly written, clear and concise. The authors share their extensive experience with the reader, notably in the third part where common pitfalls are discussed.

The index is well done, which makes this book an excellent desktop reference in addition to being a good tutorial.

The CD contains all the code for the examples, the complete book in searchable PDF, and other goodies like the Apache Server and PHP.

My recommendation: go to phpide.de and download PHPTriad to install & configure Apache/PHP/MySQL on your PC, or have someone knowledgeable do it manually for you to avoid headaches.

The only reason I can't give five stars to the first or second edition is the number of mistakes/typos in the code examples. The upload code doesn't work, PDF generation uses obsolete functions even in the second edition, etc.

Although most of the code supplied as example functions properly, it is annoying to know that a book written to teach you to program contains errors in the programming examples.

The second edition adds a chapter about XML and removes outdated URLs. Otherwise, it is the same book (including code typos).

Combined with the PHP & MySQL manuals available for download from their respective sites, allow a week or two of reading and you should have everything needed to start working.

All things considered, I strongly recommend this book.

PS: if your heart balances between ASP & PHP for server-side, consider that more servers are PHP-enabled, since it is cheaper (free).
If you want to stay in known terrain and use JScript, than go for ASP.

This book is simply great. I read the first edition about 10 months ago when I was a total beginner to PHP and MySQL (although I had taken a database course and knew some Java). This book basically got me up to speed on how to program in PHP. What's better, my database skills were packed with a lot of theory and not too much practical application and this book had a chapter that gave an excellent overview of general database concepts.

The first half of the book--basically teaching you PHP and MySQL--is great on its own. But then the 2nd half is excellent, too. They have tutorials on how to program the most common web applications: a shopping cart, a message board system, a content management system. I used this book as my primary referecne when developing my first versions of a content management system and e-commerce system and the results turned out quite well.

It's a shame that no one has reviewed the 2nd edition of this book because if you look at the Amazon.com entry for the first edition, you'll see it received over 100 reviews giving it 4.5 stars.

One word of caution about this book: they seem to forget to mention the concept of superglobals, but just look it up through Google and you'll easily get up to speed. Also, for advanced users, this book might be a decent reference but is probably a little too elementary. Maybe Professional PHP4 might be better for advanced users, although that book has some problems of its own.

I looked at a lot of PHP books and selected Luke & Laura's (in its first edition) because it had a pretty comprehensive but fast-paced introduction to the language and then went on to show several practical applications. Some other books just duplicate the php.net function reference, or walk you through the tiresome details of a single project, but this book gets you working in the language and then gives the key elements of several practical projects that are typical for PHP programmers: shopping cart, content management, mailing list, discussion forum, etc.

The authors wrote that they aimed their book at readers who have some HTML and some programming experience, but not necessarily any web-programming experience. That put me in their target market, and I found the book an excellent fit.

I looked over the second edition today, and it is a significant improvement. The code is now current with PHP 4.3, and while the authors try to use techniques that don't require the latest PHP version, the code is more compatible now with the latest version (e.g. register_globals is not assumed to be set On). Other tweaks in the code listings, e.g. "if (isset($myvar))" instead of "if ($myvar)", show the code has been polished. The typeface is improved too; there seems to be more text on each page but it's actually more legible.

I looked up a practical problem today, how to log-in and keep session-state variables for database-authenticated users. Lots of articles on the web, and even some PHP books, offer home-grown solutions that could be translations of 1997 Perl code, but Luke & Laura give a simple and elegant method (in chap. 20) that exploits PHP's latest built-in capabilities and is easy for me to extend. They extend it, too, in their example apps later in the book.

PHP is popular because it's a cheap, easy, and full-featured language for web programming. This book has the thorough and practical approach that will have you quickly building commercially useful PHP applications.

I am an above-average computer user, who has been mostly living in the Windows world. Recently, my friends and I have decided to create a business -- an e-commerce business. We knew nothing about how to do that. We are all electrical engineers, and are good at programming -- but have never really been concerned with how a website operates from the developer's standpoint. I purchased this book out of the blue -- based on the ratings it had and the sheer number of pages (I know that's lame but I'm being honest).

This book has single-handedly enabled us to start our e-commerce website. I have since configured my backup machine into a linux server, and have PHP, MySQL, and Apache running on it flawlessly. I haven't even got to chapter 12 yet, and I already have the database and the online applications up and running.

The real value of this book to me is the knowledge that other books take for granted. For example, in the appendix there is a complete how-to that describes where to get the PHP, MySQL, and Apache downloads, what versions to get, and how to install (and configure them) them both in linux and Windows. This information was critical. I needed the "enter this command to do this task" kind of guidance, as opposed to the "do this task" alternative I find in other books.

In the sections regarding the PHP syntax, it makes a clear distinction between the new features of PHP5 versus PHP4, and how to use the older versions if need be. As someone who is just learning the PHP language -- this also was very valuable information.

In a little more than a week, I went from a Windows XP user, to a linux server administrator writing (and debugging) PHP/MySQL applications who is able to answer server/database/PHP questions asked by my business partners. I highly recommend this book.

I wrote a rave review of the first edition of this book. For this second edition, I would add that Welling and Thomson have updated extensively and improved slightly a book that may well be the classic text on the topic.

PHP and MySQL are probably the most pervasive add-ons to Apache web servers across the web. Certainly they are both easy to acquire and common on a large range of web hosting systems, including several extremely low-cost ones. They also fit together extremely well.

This book demonstrates just how well. It starts out with a quick course in PHP (OK, 160 pages is hardly quick but it seems to move along at a good pace), follows it up with a brief look at MySQL before a short digression on E-commerce leads into building authentication and secure systems with the two tools (a marvelous place to start when you're thinking about commercial-grade web systems).

Then, after some more on PHP, the final section covers some large projects; a shopping cart, email service, mailing list manager and web forums. The final chapter in this section is new for this edition and covers XML and SOAP.

The new edition has been updated extensively. All scripts work now perfectly in PHP 4.3

I like this book a great deal. Even after a fair amount of time with the previous edition I still find it useful. It is well structured for finding what you need, well written, and has only a few typos. (Though there are still some, including ones in code examples -- when will authors learn to work straight off running code into the manuscript and keep godforsaken editors away from it? Brian Kernighan managed it twenty-five years ago.)

This would not be the best book if you had little programming experience, nor would it be the best book if you had a fair amount of PHP experience.

You will want to have some program design experience and preferably some experience with database design as these are given short shrift. The book also lacks examples and discussion of some of the less database intensive parts of PHP and some of the more obscure tasks you may need to perform. It covers what someone who has programmed before needs to know about both PHP and MySQL while informing on methods of using both to build practical and sturdy web applications. If that sounds like the book you want then I heartily recommend this volume to you.

I bought this a few months back and I found it useful getting started with PHP and MySQL. The problem, though, is that it doesn't go far enough: the material on PDF doesn't actually show you how to write a report from a database or get anything installed, there's almost nothing on advanced MySQL, and just 10 pages on OO programming. I also found the code hard to get going and a bit buggy. The 2nd edition seems to not really have moved with the pace of the area and it left me unsatisfied. In the end, I went in search of another book.

Williams and Lane's new 2nd edition of "Web Database Applications with PHP and MySQL" (O'Reilly, 2004) has done it for me. It weighs in at almost 800 pages, a few hundred more than its 1st edition, and it looks like an almost complete rewrite. It covers PDF reporting in depth, installation on Windows and Mac OS X, and has chapters towards the end on PEAR, advanced MySQL, and PHP55 OO features. By the time I bought it, I guess wasn't really a newbie, but I still think it is gentle enough if you're still getting the basics (the first 200 pages or so introduce PHP and MySQL). It's a pretty awesome book, and shows again why O'Reilly are a safe bet (though perhaps it's wise to wait for the 2nd editions, judging by the bugs in the 1st edition of this one).

I reckon both books are worth the money, but if you just want one, then O'Reilly's new book is better.

First off, I want to reply to "Michelle's" review.

You are totally wrong, first of all, when viewing code in specific text viewing clients, the line breaks may be removed, that is your fault, not the author's.

2nd, the authors explain include/require a lot throughout the book, and about how the include over and over, thats how a good application is done cleanly.

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Great book, shows the basis of PHP/MySQL, and works its way in the advanced aspects, covering all majoy subjects such as File systems, PHP generating images, online security, SSL [HTTPS/Secure Socket layers.], online credit card processing and more.

Truely a good buy, reccomend for all.

Overall this is a fine, if physically weighty, introduction to PHP. It will take a developer who understands web application flow reasonably well from knowing nothing about PHP to understanding how to build complex web sites.

The first 150 pages or so are on the syntax of PHP. The last 20 of those are on Object Oriented PHP (version 4), and about 10 of those are on the basics of OO programming. So I wouldn't try and learn OO PHP from this book (see Advanced PHP Programming for that.)

Section two, on database programming, starts with an introduction to the basics of database design, moves onto the mechanics of MySQL and it's interaction with PHP. It finishes with a very brief section on PEAR. This is the part that caused me to give the book only three stars. First, the database access uses string concatenation, which is error prone and insecure. Even worse, the section on PEAR, which supports the '?' operator in SQL statements, fails to mention that feature or it's advantages. Since most PHP programming is about putting a face on a database, teaching how to do databases the right way is extremely important. For a lesson in how to do database access in PHP right see another SAMS PHP book; Advanced PHP Programming.

Up to chapter twenty-four the book progresses by talking about each technology (e.g. authentication, date manipulation, regular expressions, etc.) as a sort of stove pipe. The chapters are generally short, and are well written and consistent. Graphics are used sparingly, which is appreciated.

With chapter twenty-four and beyond the author presents common tasks (e.g. login pages, shopping carts, etc.) with example applications. This is an effective technique as most of these problems involve bringing together several PHP technologies and understanding how to use them as a whole.

Overall I liked this book. I did take exception to the SQL problems in section two and I marked my review down because database access is so important to PHP web development. WIth the caveat that the reader should look elsewhere for advice on proper PHP database development I would recommend this book to anyone with some web experience who wants to develop dynamic sites with PHP.

When I found the first edition of this book I thought it was, hands down, the best general PHP/MySQL book out there. Therefore, I was very interested in seeing if the second edition would be as good. The good news is that the authors have done an excellent job of updating the book. It is not a simple rehash with an extra chapter thrown on at the end. In the first chapter I found the answer to a problem I had after updating my version of PHP. This book also manages to strike that difficult balance between being a good instructional manual and an adequate reference book. No one volume can cover everything and experts will undoubtedly need more specialized books to help them create their esoteric programs. Absolute beginners, especially those who are still struggling with HTML may find it too much. For anyone with a little programming experience, of any kind, or someone like me, an intermediate to advanced PHP user it is a book that will get multiple coffee stains and dog eared pages.

What this book offers, and where so many other technical books fail, is that it follows a very well conceived learning progression. Topics are offered in a logical order, with small illustrative examples that mostly follow a theme (an auto parts store). Later, after the major concepts have been well introduced, we get complete applications. Far too many programming books are written by people that may be experts at their niche but don't have a clue about how to actually teach. Wellington and Thompson are good teachers and good writers. From an instructional standpoint this is easily one of the better programming books around.

After reading the other reviews, I'm a bit concerned by the multiple references to buggy code. I have not tried to use the provided code verbatim but have taken the ideas and produced my own, so I can't verify the errors. For the person who gave it one star because he couldn't follow the PHP installation instructions, I understand your frustration but welcome to the world of compiling your own applications. I've been able to follow instructions that others can't and vice-versa. One missed command and tough luck. I used the Linux instructions with no problems. (for once)

So, it's 4 stars because of the unresolved code errors. I've checked the book's website and there is nothing there but a duplicate of the CD. If it had a list of corrections and perhaps a forum to go with it, I'd give the book all five stars, with pleasure.

I am a self-taught web developer. I've got quite a collection of books. So I'm picky about writing style and good teaching techniques. (i.e.: hate `friend's of ed') I learned the basics of Php from Wrox beginning Php and professional Php, but didn't get to finish the later because of having to use Php on a project that lasted over a year. I use the Php manual all of the time, but I am also using this book to find some of the details I may have missed and more elegant techniques I want to learn. So far I really like it. I can skim the stuff I know about and take note of some things I need to get better at. I do think that if you were a complete rookie, a beginner book before this one would be helpful. This book reads well and is very clear with good teaching techniques.