Customer Reviews

Web Application Development with PHP 4.0

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Most definitely, this book is not for beginners - but if you're an intermediate to advanced programmers, either with experience in PHP or another programming language, you'll want this book. The best aspect of this book, and the reason I think it has the potential to become a true classical for the PHP language, is that it covers the concepts behind web application development. After all, you have the online reference if you need to quickly check the syntax of a function! But where's the manual that teaches you about coding style, project layout and management, security, usability, session management, user authentication and advanced XML topics?

The authors write about development concepts, PHP's advanced syntax, application design, web application concepts and strategies, the Phplib, XML applications, and extending PHP with C. While presenting a lot of extremely valuable information in a condensed format (for example, most longer code examples are not printed in the book but can be found only on the CDROM), the authors still write in an easy and friendly manner. You always see that they really know the PHP language, and that they love working with PHP - indeed, both are well respected in the community. The quotes from the Dao De Jing (or Tao Te Ching) really add atmosphere to the book and bring up the level of Perl's Camel book. A definitive thumbs-up for this excellent title!

I've been a professional programmer for 10 years now (client/server applications), but I haven't made the move to WEB programming yet. Some colleagues pointed me to PHP for web development and I immediately fell in love with it (coming from C/C++). Still, many basic concepts of web development were completely hidden for me and while I had no problems to learn PHP's syntax quickly, I didn't quite understand all the meanings of sessions, XML, web security, and so on. Then I found this book and I was ENLIGHTED.Do I hate all those fluffy computers books with no meaningful content but lots of source and function references! In contrast, the authors of this book write in a very straight-forward way, precisely, and still entertaining. And they cover many concepts behind web development, focusing on the implementation with PHP. It may be a lucky coincidence, but the authors wrote exactly about the things that interest me as I'm starting professional web development with PHP. The only chapter I didn't really need was the one about coding conventions because experience has already taught me to comment and format my code. Everything else I can put into practice immediately. I've found particularly helpful the tips&tricks the authors provided; they're clearly taken from their own real life experience and have saved me hours of finding my own solutions to strange problems.Therefore, this book was great for me and I'd warmly recommend it to others. This one is going to stay on my desk for a while! :-)

When ordering this book, I expected it to contain one of the two things: a PHP language reference with examples, or a discussion of problems in web application development with an explanation of PHP approach to their solutions. Instead, I received a book that should have been titled "A few cool programming tricks with PHP". The biggest problem of the book is trying to cover too many general web- and programming-related concepts and failing to cover any of them in sufficient detail. As a result, advanced readers will get little beyond a few cool tips, and intermediate and beginning readers may not get enough information to actually use the concept. It seems like the authors picked several topics that they liked, and showed some neat tricks, without much regard for comprehensiveness or completeness.

Chapter 1, "Development concepts", has nothing to do with PHP, and adds little value. The topic is much better covered by "Code complete" by McConnell and "The practice of programming" by Kernigan and Pike.

Chapter 2, "Advanced syntax", touches on several small aspects of PHP syntax, and several selected data structures (linked lists and assosiative arrays). Since PHP does not present any difficulties in expressing these data structures compared to other programming languages, I didn't understand why those data structures were chosen here. The chapter also has an interesting example of self-modifying code (actually, dynamic code evaluation at run-time, which is not an unexpected feature for an interpreted language), and then warns "The technique used here ... should never be used like this in production scripts."

Chapter 3, "Application Design: A real-life example" presents a PHP-based IRC char server. Although authors show several interesting programming tricks, this is not a type of application one would consider "typical" for PHP. Interesting, but hardly useful.

Chapter 4, "Web application concepts", condenses together HTTP and sessions, secutiry, and usability in about 45 pages. Chapter 5, "Basic web application strategies", touches on "PHP normal form" (basic layout of a PHP script), project layout, CVS, and three-tiered applications. Again, if you are not familiar with the concepts, you risk not grasping the discussion.

Chapter 6, "Database access with PHP", covers PHPLib (I would expect a chapter on different database drivers avaiable for PHP). The chapter describes database abstraction and authentication used in PHPLib, but offers little practical advice. Read PHPlib online documentation instead.

Chapter 7, "Cutting-edge applications", offers some advice on parsing XML and using WDDX.

Chapter 8, "Case studies", offers a look at several commercial high-traffic sites that utilize PHP. The jist of all case studies is "we used it and it worked", although they include statements that will raise some eyebrows. BizChek.com case study says that PHP was selected over mod_perl because "BizChek developers felt that [mod_perl] might be lacking in dealing with high-volume Web applications". And MarketPlayer.com chose PHP because "most of the company was comfortable using WYSIWYG applications for Web development". I never thought of PHP as a "WYSIWYG" application.

Chapter 9, "Hacking the PHP core" is only truly useful for people who intend to contribute to PHP development, and I flipped through it very quickly.

Overall, the book is a good and entertaining reading written on a high professional level, but it definitely is not a reference nor a textbook. If you are already familiar with the concepts discussed in the book, you will find little new information. And if the concepts are new to you, you may be better off learning them elsewhere.

When I got this book, I was quite familiar with the language, so syntax and learning php wasn't really what my purpose was.

It has been emphasized repeatedly in online reviews, as well as within this book that it is not for the novice programmer

This book aims to help you better understand project management and how to design your web based applications.

Let me give a really small example. I wrote a web based mail program for some clients, and 3 programmers and myself spent about 4 weeks on the project. It was well done, no problems, and our clients were happy.

After reading this book, I can think of 20 different ways of making that program better.

Again, this isn't meant for the novice programmer, but experienced programmers / project managers looking to expand their php horizons should pick up a copy.

This was an excellent book. There is a wealth of information here for anyone who is trying to develop enterprise level web applications.

The book definitely is geared towards PHP4 and the Zend engine, but there is information on how some of the techniques and code can be applied to PHP3. The writing style was easy. The technical discussions were thorough and the topics were covered in a logical order.

This book is definitely for the advanced or serious developer. There is a lot information on software development practices, designing applications and advanced PHP coding techniques. If you do any serious development with PHP and especially if you're looking to utilize version 4.0, this is definitely a book for your technical library.

As another reviewer pointed out, this book was written when php4 was in beta. Despite it's title, this book is NOT a PHP 4.0 book. The extension of every example file throughout the book is .php3. The authors even present a round-about way of maintaining state using the uniqid function and rewriting the url. ??? If you're using PHP3 or if you don't mind filtering out the PHP4 relevant information, you might find this book useful, otherwise look at PHP4 Programming and/or the O'Reilly books.

I've found this book to be one of only two really useful PHP books, and I've read most of them during my three-year long career as PHP programmer. The other one is The PHP Cookbook by Hughes/Zmievski. Together they form a very important part of my technical bookshelf. The publishers should get together and release them as a bundle!

The Cookbook gives you the examples for your everyday tasks. The Web Application Development books gives you the bigger picture, the concepts behind the language and web development in general. It is only with the Web Application Development book that I've really understood all the intricancies of session handling, PHPLib, templates, and extending PHP.

If you have a basic understanding of PHP, get those two books now. It will save you a lot of time and hassle!

No, this book is not for beginners. Maybe it's not for absolute gurus, either. But for those of us in the middle-to-advanced stage, it's a godsend.

This is the first PHP book I found that explained the entire process and didn't just regurgitate the PHP function reference with a few extra snippets of code.

The authors, by the way, have written some great PHP tools. If I hadn't seen PHPMyAdmin, I probably would not be using PHP or MySQL. They have had a huge impact on the PHP community and are extremely skilled at writing both code and books like this.

Evaluate your needs. If you don't know anything about programming or PHP, start with Julie Meloni's book or the Wrox books. If you've been programming for 20 years, know how to create a complex application, know all about CVS and PHPLib, go get a function reference and dig in. If you have some PHP under your belt and are looking for a reference to help you understand application development, GET THIS BOOK.

The book was written when php 4 was still in beta, and most of the new php4 functions aren't mentioned, or used in the examples (other than the session management stuff, which was around since the earliest of php4 betas)

I feel sorry for the dead trees that went into making the section on phplib -- like we really needed a 'phplib overview' or whatever the chapter is supposed to be. The online documentation for phplib is much better. Phplib is so vast, they could have dedicated 2 or 3 chapters to some real-world uses of some of its libraries - instead we get a look at its db abstraction (boring) and a quick look at its templates module. There is a lot more to phplib than this -- but everyone seems to be regurgitating the same stuff about it...

The Case studies chapter is just a brochure on why open source is so great, and how real web sites are using it. Except, there is no 'how' - just a bunch of rachet-jaws telling us nothing. Save the propoganda on how great open source is for someone else, I paid 50 bucks to learn, not be preached to.

The most interesting part of the book is the section on self modifying code. Of course, this is only mentioned in passing, with one full example given.

There is a section on coding standards in php. Indent 4 lines, blah. Gee thanks.

They walk us through the planning of phpChat, which involves an interesting look at HTML streaming and semaphores, but when it comes time to illustrating with code, the authors drop the ball.

A whole chapter dedicated to arrays. Neato. Not advanced array concepts, but the simple stuff you can find anywhere.

The section on xml is equally as useless - plenty of code, but again, rachet jawing, useless code.

There is even a section on web usability.

Bottom line: The authors are super smart, no doubt about it. In their attempts to be all things to all people, they totally blew it - big time. This is the first book in 3 years I've ever sent back for a refund. I didn't even bother to open the CDRom (which appears to be offered as an afterthought) which does seem to have some interesting things - a pdf version of the book, etc.

Do yourself a favor - buy the Medinets book, or the red book by Jesus and the gang of 4. They provide more real life examples, more problem solving and more meat than this book ever considered delivering. I believe you will be dissapointed by this book.

Don't misunderstand: The authors are obviously very bright, but they strike out here big time. I don't need a cure-all web usability book with a touch of C, XML and 'Case Studies'. I need stuff that challenges me, solves problems in new ways and uses some of phps more advanced features.

Will anyone ever write a php book that breaks new ground? How about detailing talking to COM or Java - not just two line examples - but real world uses?

This book would be a great OUTLINE, or rough-rough-rough-rough-rough draft. 50 bucks? Never in life.

This book seems to concentrate more on program writing concepts than it does on actual PHP. Your could get more code examples from reading the online help. Actual PHP explaination and concepts aren't actually presented until the 6th or 7th chapter(more than halfway). There is not a PHP command reference anywhere in the book. I have bought the PHP Essentials book in an effort to obtain a reference.