Professional LAMP : Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP Web Development [Paperback]

Jason Gerner (Author), Morgan Owens (Author), Elizabeth Naramore (Author), Matt Warden (Author), Jeremy Stolz (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 076459723X | ISBN-13: 978-0764597237 | Publication Date: December 5, 2005 | Edition: 1

• The combination of Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP is popular because of interaction, flexibility, customization, and-most importantly-the cost effectiveness of its components
• Helps LAMP professionals take their skills to the next level with in-depth discussions of OOP; extensions of PHP such as PEAR, GD, XML, and CURL; improving site security; and advanced tools available to the coder
• Those proficient in other languages such as Java, C++, Perl and ASP will find this guide invaluable when transitioning to the LAMP environment
• The Web site includes sample scripts created in the course of each chapter, and several applications that can be modified and reused

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

The amazing combination of Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (LAMP) enjoys increasing popularity because of the interaction, flexibility, customization, and cost effectiveness of its components. In turn, LAMP has proven to be one of the fastest-growing ways to develop enterprise-level web applications. As the first book to address the LAMP module in its entirety at the professional level, this resource will help you take your web sites to the next level.

The authors encourage you to think out of the box so you can discover great new ideas for future applications that you might wish to write, or revisit some of your old code with new efficiency and power. After reading this book, you will be able to conquer any LAMP obstacle with confidence.

What you will learn from this book

• What's new in PHP 5.0
• How to configure PHP for optimal performance
• Different Apache tips and tricks
• Ways to use AJAX and PHP
• Various MySQL queries
• How to transition from other programming languages
• Tips for using PEAR, GD, XML, and CURL
• Ways to improve site security

Who this book is for

This book is for intermediate to advanced LAMP professionals. Basic concepts regarding each of the four modules is assumed. Those proficient in other computer languages such as Java, C++, Perl, and ASP will find this guide invaluable when transitioning to the LAMP environment.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

About the Author

Jason Gerner currently spends his days working as a web developer in Cincinnati and burns free time complaining about lack of support for web standards and abusing XML. He can often be found lurking in the PHPBuilder.com discussion forums, where he is a moderator.

Elizabeth Naramore earned her B.S. in Organizational Behavior from Miami University (Ohio) and has been developing websites since 1997. Her main focus has been on PHP/MySQL, e-commerce, and freelance writing and teaching. Her writing can be seen in PHPBuilder.com and International PHP Magazine. She is a proud member of OINK-PUG (Ohio, Indiana, Northern Kentucky PHP Users Group) and she lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with her husband and two small children. After graduating from the University of Auckland with a mathematics degree no one was interested in,

Morgan L. Owens knocked around the IT industry, becoming a backend web developer and programmer for web-based applications for both intranet and Internet environments. He still lives in Auckland but suggests that for the right career he might—might—consider moving.

Matt Warden has been developing web-based applications for over six years. His work has primarily focused on designing and implementing LAMP applications for other businesses to use internally to increase productivity. Recently, Matt has been using AJAX to offer a web-based alternative to productivity gains typically only available with native desktop solutions. Currently, Matt is a lead developer at Signal US Communications in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Product Details

• Paperback: 379 pages
• Publisher: Wrox; 1 edition (December 5, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 076459723X
• ISBN-13: 978-0764597237
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 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: #778,429 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Could be of interest to the right audience..., December 19, 2005

By 

Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Professional LAMP : Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP Web Development (Paperback)

If you don't know (in which case you wouldn't be reading this in all likelihood), LAMP is an acronym for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP5. It's the open source "software stack" used to do web development. If you have a basic grounding in all those software elements, you might be interested in the Wrox book Professional LAMP - Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP5 Web Development by Jason Gerner, Elizabeth Naramore, Morgan L. Owens, Matt Warden.

Contents: What's New in PHP5?; PHP5 OOP; More Obscure PHP; Advanced MySQL; PHP Configuration; Apache Tricks; Site Security; PEAR and PECL; Code Efficiency; PHP Extensions; AJAX; Caching Engines; Content Management Systems; Language Translation; Alternative Tools; Index

As you can see from the content listing, this is a bit of a grab-bag of topics that may or may not interest you. There does seem to be some contradictory information as to who the target audience might be. Looking at the back of the book, the book is described as being for "intermediate to advanced LAMP professionals". This is backed by their visual flowchart of titles, which shows this as a high-end book for those who already know what they're doing. But in the introduction, there is a description of the book as one "for web developers with some experience who want to take their websites to the next level." This is followed by a list of basic skills that they assume, none of which are the software elements that make up LAMP. While I consider myself the target of the second description, I can tell you that this isn't a book that I could use to learn and understand LAMP. You definitely need to have a firm grasp of PHP in order to gain value from this material, as they go into new and advanced features very quickly.

Having stated the caveats, I will say the book is laid out well and would be beneficial to the right audience. There is a lot of code to use and play with, and the information is well documented. The focus is on PHP5 material, so I think that you'd find the book most valuable if you were a PHP developer looking for tricks and tips using the latest version of the software. The Linux part of LAMP is not covered much at all. It's assumed that you're using Linux to run the "AMP" part of the stack, but that's about as far as it goes. If you're looking for Linux info, you won't get much out of this book.

Recommendation? If you're firmly grounded in LAMP and you're looking for information that goes beyond the basics, you might be interested. If you're just looking to get started, you'll want to look elsewhere...

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Next Level, May 5, 2006

By 

Nathan Smith (SonSpring.com) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Professional LAMP : Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP Web Development (Paperback)

I just finished reading Professional LAMP. These four components make for quite a powerful open source solution. It is being used at the enterprise level, with companies such as Yahoo and Google taking advantage of the flexibility if can offer. This book is ideal for anyone wanting to delve further into this development environment. As far as I know, it is the first book to cover LAMP at the professional level. The full listing of chapter topics covered are as follows:

1. What's New in PHP5
2. PHP5 Object Oriented Programming
3. More Obscure PHP
4. Advanced MySQL
5. PHP Configuration
6. Apache Tricks
7. Site Security
8. PEAR and PECL
9. Code Efficiency
10. PHP Extensions
11. AJAX
12. Caching Engines
13. Content Management Systems

As you can maybe tell, the above topics are a bit light on the "L" aspect of LAMP. Linux is covered briefly, addressed as the platform on which the AMP aspect runs. To be honest, I did not expect that this book would be a comprehensive look at Linux, because there is already a plethora of books out there. This book addresses in detail many aspects of Apache, MySQL and PHP.

- What's New in PHP5

This chapter covers the changes between PHP versions 4 and 5. This includes object-oriented programming, new functions, configuration changes, mysqli, XML support, Tidy library extension, and SQLite. Suffice it to say, there is quite a bit of information to absorb from this comprehensive first chapter.

- PHP5 OOP

This chapter opened with a good discussion on procedural versus object oriented programming. It then moved on to cover class definitions, methods and instances. One of the things I thought was cool is abstract, which allows you to create a class that can be extended by others. Using OOP methods also allows you to build an extensible API so that developers can create their own plugins. One such example would be peppers that people make for Mint.

- More Obscure PHP

This chapter was great, and helped to clear up some confusion for me. It covered some of the history behind Perl and C that led to PHP coming into its own. Like many languages, PHP has been around long enough that there is some "legacy" code still packaged in it. These relics remain only for backwards compatibility with older applications. Much like target="_blank" and iframe are deprecated as of XHTML 1.0 Strict, there are some things in PHP that are no longer supposed to be used, though they are still supported.

Anyway, the point is that PHP has breadth and depth that many programmers never even touch. They describe it like the English language, that though we understand quite a bit of terminology, most of us only use a small portion of it in our own daily vocabulary. Examples of things covered in this chapter are: callbacks, array_map(), array_walk(), array_filter(), preg_replace_callback(), call_user_func_array(), create_function(), glob() and creating streams.

They even discuss the code necessary to create an aerial orthophoto database query, such as would be seen in Google Maps' satellite view. They cover various compression methods for PNG files that make up the series of photos. I have to admit, it is pretty heady stuff, so you'll just have to check it out for yourself.

- Advanced MySQL

In this chapter, a simulated list of cars at an auto dealership is presented. They show you how to maintain data based on manufacturer, model, paint color, etc. There are many code examples for creating new entries, modifying existing data, and joining / merging tables. Also covered is how to use a MySQL database with the InnoDB storage engine, as opposed to the default MyISAM. Some of the benefits to this include transactions, row-level locking, and foreign key constraints. The one major drawback is lack of full-text searching. They also show you how to switch back and forth between MyISAM and InnoDB on the fly, should you ever need to use both in any particular situation.

In addition, the process of granting / revoking user priviledges is covered, which is a crucial aspect to understand if you want to have different tiers of access to different sections of your data. For instance, you might want the administrator to be able to affect everything, whereas your staff worker you would only want to be able to enter new entries into a product inventory.

- PHP Configuration

Next, they cover some of the basics of tweaking PHP for optimal performance. This all revolves around the php.ini file. They give several recommendations for settings to change, such as: register_globals = off, display_errors = off, log_errors = on, magic_quotes = off, asp_tags = off, and short_open_tag = off. They gave a compelling reason why to leave off short_open_tag, because instead being "< ?php", it is shortened to "< ?". This would cause a parsing error, because XML is written "< ?xml" but would be treated as PHP because it begins with "< ?" as well. If you plan on doing any AJAX, this would create major problems. Keen insights such as this are sprinkled throughout this chapter.

- Apache Tricks

This chapter offered a slew of helpful pointers on Apache Server, including sixteen pages on mod_rewrite alone, the Apache module that allows for more readable clean URL's, instead of messy addresses. Consider the following two examples, both of which lead to the same page (this very book review):

* godbit.com/article/professional-lamp-review
* godbit.com/index.php?id=110

As you can see, while the first might be a bit more lengthy, it contains more memorable information, such as the fact this is an article, and it is a book review of Professional LAMP. This goes a long way in making things more human friendly, and helps search engines index your site more accurately.

Another topic covered is that of mod_deflate, a compression method used in conserving bandwidth. This will cause Apache to send along text such as HTML and CSS with white-space and line-breaks compressed in gzip format, which most browsers are able to interpret and then convert back into a plain text, uncompressed equivalent. The book gives the example of sending a Zip file in an email, rather than several separate attachments. There are also security tips, such as authenticating MySQL users or using SSL when uploading files.

- Site Security

This leads me into the next chapter, which is all about security. Inevitably, with the ungoverned way the Internet operates, you will have malicious people trying to mess with your website. Basically, if you want something secure, don't hook it up to the `net. That being said, there are significant precautions you can take in order to minimize the likelihood that your site will be compromised either intentionally or accidentally.

They explain how to control authentication with both Apache and then adding another layer of PHP checks, such as form validation or register_globals protection. Plus, there is a section on protecting yourself from SQL injection attacks. This nastiness works by using an input, such as comment form or discussion forum, to do things like drop tables or granting user priviledges. Suffice it to say, that can cripple a database driven site, such as this one.

- PEAR and PECL

It has been said that good programmers borrow, but great programmers steal. While I do not advocate ripping people off, the premise of this quote is that if it's been done before, you'd be wasting your time to re-invent the wheel. PEAR - PHP Extension and Repository, and PECL - PHP Extension Community Library are two big components of what make PHP so great. You could think of it as standing on the shoulders of giants, continuing to build where they left off. Basically, each of these is a big pool of submitted extensions that improve PHP's functionality. You could think of it like installing a plugin for the language.

There are far too many extensions to do justice in this review, but one of the ones mentioned in the book was the Date class. With this package installed, you can reference and modify the date with methods like these: addSeconds, getDayName, getMonth, getNextDay, getQuarterOfYear, isLeapYear, etc. As you can tell, each of those is more human readable than: echo date("Y");.

- Code Efficiency

This was a great chapter on balancing code efficiency with real time efficiency. In other words, you don't want to kill yourself over a few milliseconds of loading time, if it is going to take several hours of real development work, especially if that time could be spent better elsewhere. They gave an example of a server computer running software slowly. The first reaction might be to buy new software, resulting in days of lost productivity due to necessary data backup, operating system and program upgrades. In their example though, all that was needed was more system RAM, requiring only a few minutes of down-time.

They take this same principle and apply it to coding methods, benchmarking a few ways of writing mathematical computations, namely a<<3 versus a*8 to multiply a variable integer by 8. If that looks like Greek to you, don't worry because it's explained in this chapter. Essentially, it's an argument of binary notation versus long-hand yet human readable code. They even go so far as to benchmark single quoted (') vs. double quoted (") strings. After an extensive series of tests, and rendering two very complex 3D graphs, it appears that single quoted is in fact faster, though many things can affect the outcome.

Aside from the theoretical arguments, they also... Read more ›

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Mostly covers PHP, August 28, 2006

By 

Roy Hollinger - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Professional LAMP : Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP Web Development (Paperback)

This book only gives rudimentary coverage of MySQL or Apache.

Twenty one pages in the chapter for 'Advanced MySQL' -- really! 13 pages of this is a review of SQL, how to do queries, updates, deletes, etc.

Apache got 35 pages and was a little better. It did have info on rewriting URLs but a lot of time was spent on rewrite patterns and rules. Many of the other items and configuration settings could be gleamed from the Apache configuration file.

I really was disappointed as I expected more of a discussion of PHP in the context of MySQL and Apache. I wish the authors had spent as much time on the other subjects as they did on PHP.

Linux -- wasn't even in the table of contents or the index and I didn't see anything that was even close.

The discussion of PHP covered subjects like installing packages, code effeciency and PHP extensions and was adequate.

Maybe the book should be called "PHP Packages Available".