Customer Reviews

Sams Teach Yourself PHP in 24 Hours (3rd Edition)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

3rd edition Published (December 16, 2003)
ISBN: 0672326191 Covers PHP 4.3

First I'd like to mention that a lot of these reviews are from earlier versions of this book which makes reviewing this Third Edition very difficult. So it may be safe to disregard reviews dated before 12/16/03.

This is an excellent book for beginners who know nothing about programming. However you must know XHTML before beginning this book. I have about 5 "Beginning" PHP books and this one is the best by far.

The author has a very clean, straight forward writing style as he teaches the very basics of php and programming fundamentals including Object Oriented Programming. This book is a solid and comprehensive piece of work. It is by no means a "Shortcut" to learning PHP. If you want a solid understanding of PHP, this is the book.

Something to note is that this book focuses on teaching the reader how to program and does not have comprehensive example applications. Rather, it has basic examples for each section that help keep the pace streamlined.

After reading this book, you'll wont to get something like, The PHP Anthology By Harry Fuecks Vol. 1&2... or PHP and MySQL Web Development, Second Edition by Luke Welling, Laura Thomson. These books will teach you by example and are excellent.

A note to beginners... Learning to program can be very difficult. Unless you are some kind of genius, you must be dedicated and patient with your quest. Programming is a totally different way of thinking and there is a lot to learn... I think this book is a great way to learn PHP and to learn how to program in general.

Good Luck!

Not the first PHP book I've read. Good coverage of the incredible width of PHP facilities. Short on suggesting practical coding exercises. Sample code available (if you can find it).

However (in common with most other PHP texts)it has already been overtaken by change/developments (book (c)2002, claims to be release 4.0.5 'aware'). From releases 4.1.0/4.2.0 the (PHP.INI) register_globals directive has been set to 'off' by default, and recommended to be kept that way for security reasons. Doing so will 'break' the first practical chapter ("Working with PHP") Hour 9 (Forms), and impacts Hours 13, 20, 24 to a lesser degree (and possibly others) - per hundreds of cries for help on PHP Internet discussion lists.

Either wait for a book that refers to this MAJOR change in PHP, carefully study the PHP ChangeLog (not for the faint-hearted or raw beginners!), or trawl the discussion list archives to teach yourself about the new 'superglobals'.

Sorry!

I have 8-10 years of experience with VB(A) as a hobbyist programmer (ergo no college training). I understand OO Programming to a degree, at least as far as I have used it, and now wanting to move into web application development I believe PHP is that key. However, the language is so vast. There are an unlimited number of functions both internal and user-created that handle an insane number of programming situations. I needed something to walk me through the basics... this book did that, is doing that, and will probably continue to do that. Beyond that it also touches on some important features to wet-your-whistle, so-to-speak. Smarty and XML and XSL to name a few. Excellent book, I recommend it for beginners and intermediate users alike... beginners, don't read past what you understand... and all will go well!

I thought this was an excellent introduction to PHP programming. The author really covers a broad swath of PHP, with as much depth as 400 pages will allow. If you're looking for more depth, pick up a book that's meant to be more in depth; if you're looking for a clearer introductory text, you'll have a hard time finding ont. This book is clearly written, has good working examples, and is extremely well-organized. I have a few other PHP books lying around, but I still come back to this book as a reference almost every day.

I have a small shelf filled with PHP books. They all helped me a little bit (perhaps I'm just a slow learner.) But it wasn't until I worked through the 24 lessons in this book that I finally began to feel that I was getting a firm grip on the fundamentals of writing solid PHP code. This is the book that turned me from a bumbling amateur to someone on a respectable intermediate level, completely comfortable with reading through more advanced books on PHP (books that go beyond the usual: "here's how to build a simple shopping cart.")

If you're starting out with PHP, I'd recommend that you start with this book of 24 lessons. By the end you'll actually feel competent and that you are sure-footedly headed toward the goal of mastery!

I'm an experienced PHP coder, since early PHP4. I started learning PHP from a (slightly earlier edition of) this book (although it has the same ISBN), from reading other scripts and then coding them. Even now, as experienced as I am, I still find it a very useful resource; most of the time it's easier to find something in there than by searching on a search engine or the PHP.net website.

You could do a *LOT* worse than to buy this. Learn PHP, expand your knowledge of it, or get it just for general reference if/when you get stuck!

I tried other PHP books such as PHP Quick and Easy and PHP Developer's Cookbook but they all left me in the dark and were hard to follow. This book however assumes you know nothing at all which is pretty much what I knew. The book starts you off with the basics of PHP: different types of data, variables, functions, loops, etc. and takes you further even. This book is definatly one that a beginner with no coding experience or very little experience should look into.

This is not a PHP programming book. This book will teach you about the very basics of PHP syntax and structure and while it will not get you anywhere near proficiency, it will give you a very solid, albeit simple, foundation from which to continue. With literally thousands of included functions and thousands more specialized functions available for all forms of tasks, PHP is a rich and subtle language not easily learned in a hurry. This book will provide the foundation to continue exploring the language in a very straight forward and understandable presentation.

For example, the book covers arrays with 19 sections which gives a good knowledge base and allows the beginner to begin to use these incredibly useful entities but it doesn't come close to the available 77 array functions contained within the language. Or the 21 string functions covered in the book versus the 97 functions available in the language.

Anybody interested in learning PHP will also want to bookmark [...] as the definitive source of information regarding the language.

While knowledge of HTML/XHTML is not needed to learn PHP the typical usage of PHP will require a good understanding of markup languages and knowledge of HTTP will go a long way to making your life easier too. Because of PHP's versatility, the successful programmer will soon be learning SQL and XML to name only two.

I encourage any beginning PHP programmer to buy this book for the basics. To glimpse PHP programming issues, I would refer you to 'PHP Solutions: Dynamic web design made easy' by David Powers from Friends of Ed as the next step in you education.

PHP Solutions: Dynamic Web Design Made Easy

When i bought this book, i already knew console based C++, so this isn't my first plunge into programming. I didn't, however, have a lick of PHP knowledge.

As a learning tool, it is ok. The first few chapters are very easy to learn. However, about 1/3-1/2 the way through the book, the learning curve steepens. The concepts become harder to grasp, but if you have had some programming in the past, this shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Now that i have learned PHP, mostly from this book, but also from the php.net website as well as some forums (forums.devshed.com has a great developer forum), this book is a great reference. It is well indexed, and if I happen to forget something, i can look it up very quickly. If the book doesn't have it, i can usually find it on the php website or on forums.

I'd also like to comment on another review before this one,
on T. Sagert "whambulance"'s post. This isn't a ""no programming needed" beginner MySQL" as this ISN'T A MYSQL BOOK!

I knew nothing about PHP before reading this book, now I do backends for hundred-page sites and many other dificult scripts. Doesnt go quite into the amount of detail on MySQL as I would prefer, but was worth it none the less...