Customer Reviews

The PHP Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Having bought a few beginner's books on PHP and written a basic CMS for my Website, I was ready to move to the step. What I didn't want is a reference book or a 800 page theory & fluff book that I would never finish reading -- much less use.

Being a previous customer of this publisher, I got an offer to pre-order the book. Since it sounded like it fit the bill and I got a discount for buying both Volume I & II, I decided to go ahead with it.

Having read through half of the first volume, and skimmed through the second volume, I can definitely say that this title has met my expectations. There's quite a few ideas that I can put to use right away, plus I found quite a few things that I now want to offer to my site visitors that this book will make possible.

Because of the way the book is written, I don't have to read through it front to back. I can flip to specific sections, and in a few pages, learn to accomplish a specific task. This is one PHP book - or I should say books - that gets my thumbs up. It's definitely going to get put to good use over the next few weeks.

This is a great book!
I bought about 10 PHP books to help me with a web project involving MySQL/PHP. I am a professional Java developer, therefore the principles of PHP are not hard to grasp. Still, everything is different in PHP, and before I saw this book I had the impression that the majority of PHP developers are hacking, cutting and pasting examples into procedural code at random.

After getting started using "PHP and MySQL Web Develpment" by Luke Wellling and Laura Thompson (highly recommended) this book brought me to a level that I can now clain to be a professional PHP programmer too.

This book clearly shows that it is possible to develop PHP in an organized way, using proper design, good object-oriented principles and design patterns (in vol.II). Besides that, there are many practical tips about things I found really difficult as Java programmer: magical quotes, .ini file settings, & references, file downloads, paging result tables, etc. etc. The book is clearly written and answers every question from the standpoint of how to do something using good design and how to write code that is maintainable, extensible and reusable.

I really wasn't sure what to expect with the book, my shelves are already packed with a stack of good PHP books that I've read through once, got a few good gems of info from, put on the shelf, and never touch again.

It was the title that got me first interested in this book, sort of like the greatest hits of PHP which, in theory, is a book that I expected to get a little more use from.

I'm happy to say that this book delivered on it's promise and them some.

The difference between this book and say some of the other more tutorial style PHP books I own is that it doesn't follow the one size fits all approach. It actually explains solutions to problems that your able to adapt you your own world. I downloaded the code from the books website which made my life even easier.

It's organized into stack of little mini tutorials covering most of the challenges you'll face if you're programming with PHP. I didn't read this from cover-to-cover but more jumped straight to some of the specific sections that I was keen to learn about. The layout and design of this book enables you to jump around from section to section easily.

I'm now finding myself going back to this book time and time again as new problems crop up, just today I had to solve a caching issue and violia a nice little example of exactly what I needed was there in chapter 11. It saved me a stack of time so I thought I'd use it to write this review.

It's also worth noting that chapter 1 contains a nicely written introduction to object-oriented PHP and is worth a read if your just starting with PHP and everyone should read chapter 13. Even though I've been programming in PHP for a while now this chapter opened my eyes to why I experience some of the frustrations I do... I'd probably be happy with paying the cover price just for that chapter alone.

It's my first sitepoint book and I've got to say I'm extremely happy. They seem to do things a little different than you're old schoolers and I've got to say the approach is refreshing. I'd have no problem with recommending this to PHP developers at any level.

While I wouldn't read this book cover-to-cover, it makes a very handy and current reference title for any intermediate PHP programmer.

100 Solutions, neatly divided into 13 chapters, make it very quick to find what I was looking for. The downloadable code from the publishers website also helped a great deal and saved me some time.

I found the security checklist at the back of the book particularly useful and helped me pinpoint and solve some potential vulnerbilities. Chapter 13 on best practices was also a clear standout in my mind, as it covers PHP coding best practices and helped me improve how I work.

With so many books on the market instructing users on dummy approaches to just about everything, it is good to see that Sitepoint has raised the bar, once again, in the technical instruction arena. In continuing the legacy established with "Build Your Own Website Using PHP & MySQL" and "HTML Utopia:Designing Without Tables Using CSS", they have taken a
complex and oft misunderstood approach to coding and presented PHP in a dymystified way that is easy to understand, exciting to conceptualize and practical in application. Harry Fuecks brings a great deal of experience and leadership to Sitepoint, giving the users a way to take linear procedural code and turn it into reusable objects for easier coding. These books will sit on my "favorites" shelf within arms reach of my computer for a long time to come. Kudos, Sitepoint, on yet another stellar release.
~Aaron Brazell, Emmense Technologies

I recently bought both volumes and am currently reading them. They both provide very good examples in an easy to read and understand format. I am a little disappointed in the coverage of php5, however. The cover proudly displays a "PHP 5 Ready" label, but it seems like this constitutes just a couple paragraphs added here and there to the old version. Also there is much talk about MySQL, but again it's not version 5.

Overall it is a very good resource aimed at the beginning or next level programmer, but probably best to wait for the next addition truly devoted to php5. In the meantime I would recommend "PHP and MySQL Web Development" by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson.

I would also recommend checking out Harry Fuecks' (the author of this book) articles on sitepoint.com. Very good.

Having bought a few beginner's books on PHP and written a basic CMS for my Website, I was ready to move to the step. What I didn't want is a reference book or a 800 page theory & fluff book that I would never finish reading -- much less use.

Being a previous customer of this publisher, I got an offer to pre-order the book. Since it sounded like it fit the bill and I got a discount for buying both Volume I & II, I decided to go ahead with it.

Having read through half of the first volume, and skimmed through the second volume, I can definitely say that this title has met my expectations. There's quite a few ideas that I can put to use right away, plus I found quite a few things that I now want to offer to my site visitors that this book will make possible.

Because of the way the book is written, I don't have to read through it front to back. I can flip to specific sections, and in a few pages, learn to accomplish a specific task. This is one PHP book - or I should say books - that gets my thumbs up. It's definitely going to get put to good use over the next few weeks.

I have been reading alot of books on PHP 5's new object features. I picked up this book hoping it would meet somewhere between "Object-Oriented PHP" by Peter Lavin and "PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practices". The next day I ended up giving the book to my co-worker. I started reading it on the train and was completely disappointed! The entire object oriented chapter is written for PHP 4 besides one blurb that mentions refrences won't be needed in PHP 5. This book is in serious need of a new edition!

If you are beginning PHP programming this book is just one of the hundreds of books that cover the same common issues. If you are looking for the latest PHP has to offer, this isn't your book.

There were so many details in this book that I attempted to find on-line, but had no luck. This book is worth ten times its price. Great job! Thanks.

Having built Object Oriented solutions for over nine years in C++ and Delphi, PHP had me confused by the nature of its object system. I was unable to find suitable information on the web on such issues as the PHP object lifecycle, applicability of patterns (entire section on patterns), how to handle the looser typing mechanism (automated tests), and how to optimize for performance. This book solved ALL of my problems!!!

The text is simple and exceedingly practical but far from boring! In fact, I was so excited by how clearly the information was conveyed that I did in fact read both volumes I and II cover to cover - TWICE (though you can use them as reference works). Not only that but the texts significantly increased my respect for PHP; from gruding acceptance of its use to having some genuine affection for the language and appreciation for its power.

If you are completely new to development these books (I and II) are for. If you are an advanced developer with years of OO experience and are just getting started in PHP then you will be relieved by what you find here.

All of that aside, I will say that there were a few instances where the author kludged the definition of an OO concept to make it fit within the PHP framework. There are some substantial ways in which PHP 4 just does not hold up as an OO language (PHP 5 fixes them). However, the author really had no choice in the matter because if he had tried to explain the formal OO concept, then PHP 4's interpretation of that concept and how to implement he would have lost 90% of his audience. So even this one complaint ends with praise - the author skillfully sacrifices detail only where necessary to increase the palatibility of the materal.

Great job! Great book!

Once again, regardless of your skill level if you are going to be doing any halfway serious PHP work you NEED this series.