Customer Reviews

Professional CodeIgniter (Wrox Professional Guides)

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

 

 

CodeIgniter is the fastest PHP framework out there, and it works. There are very few bugs in the code. The other thing that CodeIgniter has that other frameworks don't is a good forum and excellent documentation. It has an outstanding Users Guide you can download which lists every function with a code example.

And now, there are two books out on CodeIgniter. I purchased both books, and reviewed "CodeIgniter for Rapid PHP Application Development." "Professional CodeIgniter" is a completely different book. I figure folks might want to know the difference before they buy.

"Professional CodeIgniter" walks you through a complete web application from start to finish. The author is an experienced web developer. It is thorough and very detailed. The first chapter introduces you to how to use the MVC architecture with CodeIgniter. The second chapter introduces you to using the Agile development methodologies with a client who needs an ecommerce site. You are inside the head of a web developer as he talks with the client, and draws up what the site will look like on a piece of paper. Then the fun begins. In Chapter 3 you download CodeIgniter and he walks you through laying out the folders and intial configuration of CodeIgniter followed by the initial screen for the site. Other chapters follow:
Chapter 4 - Creating the main web site
Chapter 5 - Building a shopping cart
Chapter 6 - Creating a Dashboard
Chapter 7 - Improving the Dashboard
Chapter 8 - Last Minute Upgrades
Chapter 9 - Security and Performance
Chapter 10 - Launch

The index is very detailed which makes the book good for a reference. There is lots of code and the code is available on the publishers site.

There are some pitfalls. If your going to get anything out of the book you got to follow along, and create the site for yourself, which makes the going slow. On top of that there are bugs in the code which makes the book frustrating, and slows you down further. You can look at it two ways, there are bugs in the code, so this book is a waste; or you're learning how to fix bugs in CodeIgniter. There are times when I was banging my head against the wall. On the other hand, there are things like how to write a search engine and shopping cart for the site that make the book worthwhile. Four stars, a very slow, but thorough read.
A lot of content, but you've got to dig to get the gold.

It is always astounding how a publisher can claim to have an expert author, technical reviewers and editors, and still have code that needs to be fixed to work. It just makes you wonder if the editors and technical reviewers ever actually read and worked their way through from page one to the end.
Having said that, you can learn from this book if:
1. You are at least an intermediate php programmer with decent knowledge of object oriented principles.
2. You are patient enough to wade through not just the few typos, but the outright botched code examples.
Don't assume you can pick up php and codeigniter at the same time especially from this book. The price of entrance and the price of gaining anything of value from this book is to understand enough object oriented php to be able to follow along.

The author does spend time on showing you how to fix code problems. But if you've worked with php at all, you could make just as good guesses at how to fix most of these issues as his suggestions. Maybe it is a way to get you to think that more bad code in the book is just an "opportunity" for you to fix it.

I pay money to learn from a book. Is it too much to ask that the code work? Yeah, you can fix it. Yeah, you can learn from fixing it. But I could have learned what I needed from code that worked and then moved on and fixed bugs in my own code in my own applications. Yeah, you could send even more errata reports to the publisher, but at some point shouldn't the publisher take some sort of responsibility themselves? If they wanted to publish a 'beta book', that would be one thing. But a finished book ought to be clean and error checked and it should work. And guess what? In exchange for that effort, the publisher and author would sell far more copies of the book.

I was looking for a book that was half reference, the other half examples using CI libs, etc...

The author's approach is good, just not for me, as he takes you from square one, with meeting with the client and taking what you wrote down during your meeting with the "client" to putting it into play. I really enjoyed that approach but it was my fault for not realizing this before I purchased the book.

I think the best bet is to refer to the online documentation, which is why CI is so popular. No other PHP MVC can compare when it comes to its documentation.

If you are looking to learn CodeIgniter and do not know PHP, please stop and look for a book to learn PHP first.

This books was based on single sample a lot. Because of that finding certain topic of CI was difficult. However when you find it there was some nice information. Also too much Scrum for CI only book.
Not a reference book, but nice thing to read if you want to get familiar
with one CI sample project.

Este libro es exactamente lo que estaba buscando desde que decidi utilizar CodeIgniter como framework php, te lleva paso a paso a como crear una aplicacion con CI y principalmente esa parte privada de toda aplicacion web.
Lo Recomiendo 100% para todo el que este iniciandose en el mundo del MVC con CodeIgniter.