PHP 5 Unleashed [Paperback]

John C. Coggeshall (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 067232511X | ISBN-13: 978-0672325113 | Publication Date: January 7, 2005 | Edition: 1

Over 12 million Internet domains worldwide use the PHP language to power their websites. If you are a programmer included in this group, or would like to be one, you should pick up a copy of PHP Unleashed. The definitive guide in PHP programming, PHP Unleashed thoroughly and authoritatively covers the release of PHP 5, as well as advanced topics not found in other books. It begins with a detailed summary of the basics and then quickly moves on to more advanced topics such as working with data, outputting graphical data and building complete applications. Whether you're an experienced programmer and new to PHP, or an experienced PHP programmer but new to PHP 5, this is the one PHP book you need in your library.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

PHP 5 Unleashed Lead Author

John Coggeshall is a Technical Consultant for Zend Technologies where he provides professional services to clients around the world. He got started with PHP in 1997 and is the author of two published books and over 100 articles on PHP technologies with some of the biggest names in the industry such as Sams Publishing, Apress and O'Reilly. John also is a active contributor to the PHP core as the author of the tidy extension, a member of the Zend Education Advisory Board, and frequent speaker at PHP-related conferences worldwide. His web site, http://www.coggeshall.org/ is an excellent resource for any PHP developer.

Contributing Authors

Christian Wenz is author or coauthor of more than three dozen books. He specializes in Web technologies, with focus on Web scripting languages and Web services. He frequently writes for IT magazines and speaks at national and international conferences. Christian maintains or co-maintains several PEAR packages and is Germany's very first Zend Certified Engineer. Christian contributed eight chapters to PHP 5 Unleashed. He lives and works in Munich, Germany.

Sara Golemon is an application developer at the University of California at Berkeley as well as a contributor to the PHP project and other Open Source applications. She helps maintain the PHP streams layer and miscellaneous core extensions and has made more than 400 individual contributions to the online manual, authoring entire reference sections and appendixes. Sara is also the lead developer of nine PECL extensions, including Runkit, Classkit, Parsekit, OggVorbis, and OpenAL.

J. Scott Johnson is the founder of Feedster.com, a leading provider of XML Search Services. He is also the founder of NTERGAID, Inc., and was previous Vice President of Engineering for Mascot, Network. He is a leading blogger, author, and software developer.

Ben Ramsey is a Technology Manager for Hands On Network, an international, non-profit volunteer organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. Before his move to the non-profit sector, he worked for four years as the Technology Director for Roswell, Georgia-based EUREKA! Interactive, Inc. With EUREKA!, he served as the software architect and lead programmer of numerous Web-based applications for local governments and small businesses. He is a Zend Certified Engineer and co-founder of Atlanta PHP.

Marco Tabini is the publisher of phparchitect (http://www.phparch.com), the premier magazine for PHP professionals, and has worked on websites for clients ranging from small startup operations to the Fortune 500s. Despite having been an IT industry professional for the last 15 years, he still manages to maintain a reasonable level of sanity–at least most of the time.

Aron Hsiao is a Linux enthusiast with over a decade of administrative Unix experience. He has worked in various capacities in network deployment, in software and web development, and in the online retail industry. He served as the About.com guide to Linux from 1997 through 2001 and holds a Masters degree in the Social Sciences from the University of Chicago. He is the author of The Concise Guide to XFree86 for Linux, Sams Teach Yourself Red Hat Desktop All In One, and other popular Linux titles.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Welcome to PHP 5 Unleashed! The pages you now hold represent more than two years of research and writing, during which time every attempt was made to ensure the most technically accurate and complete PHP 5 book on the market today. It is my sincere hope that this book will find itself dog-eared from use in your home or office in the months to come.

I began my work with PHP back in mid 1997 when a friend introduced me to the language as "something kind of cool." Being interested in Web development and the Internet in general, I was immediately hooked on the ease with which I could develop applications. I still remember the first time I wrote a script to query a MySQL database, producing a simple HTML table of its contents as vividly as my first "Hello World" application written in GW-Basic years before. It was the start of a passion which has kept me involved in both the use and development of the language to this day.

A lot has changed since those days of PHP (which was then PHP 3.0). Although a lot of the principles remain, what was once a "kind of cool" language has evolved into an incredibly robust and powerful language used by enterprises big and small around the globe. Today, PHP 5 brings to the table a wealth of functionality, balancing power with flexibility—and this book hopes to capture both within its pages. From the technologies of 1997 to the cutting edge of today, this book will show you how to make this powerful, yet deceptively simple, language work for you and your organization.

I truly hope you find this book insightful, educational, and most of all, useful in your future PHP development. For additional information, please visit http://unleashed. coggeshall.org/.

Organization of the Book

From an organizational standpoint, you will find that this book has been arranged to act as much as a reference as it is a cover-to-cover read. It would in fact be quite impressive for anyone to read the hundreds of pages of technical material which follows and retain anything from it all! Rather than having such high (and honestly, probably unrealistic) expectations, I have designed each chapter and section of this book to allow you to hone in on a specific technology or group of technologies that you are interested in at the time, without necessarily requiring you to read the other chapters. This is also reflected within the examples, which you will find to be focused in the most practical fashion possible on the technology being discussed.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Paperback: 840 pages
• Publisher: Sams; 1 edition (January 7, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067232511X
• ISBN-13: 978-0672325113
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,053,952 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Book For The Intermediate PHP Programmer, October 10, 2005

A Kid's Review

This review is from: PHP 5 Unleashed (Paperback)

After reading a PHP5 book in the past I was happy with it. However it was for beginers. I searched for something more advanced. This was it. PHP5 Unleashed goes over several advanced topics. In example there is Regular Expressions (aka. Regex), Advanced MySQL techniches, accessing the OS's programs (Like dd, cp, etc) and more. One thing I should note as that there are some parts that can't be done on Windows. To get the most of this book you need Linux. ( If you want Linux download the ISO image of Fedora Core 4 at fedora.redhat.com. It is great for beginers to Linux. You can also use Mandrakelinux ([...]) but it isn't as simple to use.) Also note that this book has a section for new users but it is small and you should buy a book for beginers first. Might I recommend "PHP5 Fast & Easy Web Development" for novices.

A little disappointment is that this book shows you only how to INSTALL PEAR. It doesn't show you how to use it at all.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars alot of good stuff, October 12, 2008

By 

Lee Thornton "Lee thornton" (Fort Lauderdale) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: PHP 5 Unleashed (Paperback)

This is your basic huge book of php concepts from the basics to the advanced. It reads more like a manual than a demonstration or tutorial.
I would recomend it to anyone looking to get a good overview of php 5

2.0 out of 5 stars Not for Beginning PHP Coders, January 25, 2009

By 

Brad Smith (NC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: PHP 5 Unleashed (Paperback)

I am using this book for a college course I am taking. Having no experience with PHP, this book leaves a lot of questions for a beginner and can become very frustrating very quickly. Even following the code in the book and using a site set up to run PHP script, a lot of times the script that is written in the book does not run nor does the book do anything to show what the results of the script should do. Again for a beginner this becomes very frustrating and not very helpful to learn PHP code.

I am actually learning more from an older SAMS book, "Teach Yourself PHP4 in 24 hours", the only problem is we are trying to learn PHP5.

This is also become a problem for other students in the class as I have quickly learned. (Ranging from not knowing to use the .php extension to not knowing the code has to run on a computer or server with PHP installed) As I stated before, we are all Beginners dealing with the PHP script and what may seem obvious for more experienced PHP coders is not for first time coders, and this book does not even discuss these basics.