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Wicked Cool PHP: Real-World Scripts That Solve Difficult Problems [Paperback]

William Steinmetz (Author), Brian Ward (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews) |
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Book Description

Publication Date: February 16, 2008

Instead of starting at "Hello World," Wicked Cool PHP assumes that you're familiar with the language and jumps right into the good stuff. After you learn the FAQs of life-the most commonly wished for PHP scripts-you'll work your way through smart configuration options and the art of forms, all the way through to complex database-backed scripts.

Wicked Cool PHP contains a wide variety of scripts to process credit cards, check the validity of email addresses, template HTML, and serve dynamic images and text. The 76 easily implemented scripts will also teach you how to:

Send and receive email notifications Track your visitors' behavior with cookies and sessions Override PHP's default settings Manipulate dates, images, and text on the fly Harness SOAP and other web services Create an online poll, ecard delivery system, and blog

But it's not all fun and games: Security is a big concern when programming any web application. So you'll learn how to encrypt your confidential data, safeguard your passwords, and prevent common cross-site-scripting attacks. And you'll learn how to customize all of the scripts to fit your own needs.

Dynamic Web content doesn't have to be difficult. Learn the secrets of the craft from two experienced PHP developers with Wicked Cool PHP.

Frequently Bought Together

Wicked Cool PHP: Real-World Scripts That Solve Difficult Problems + Learning PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript: A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating Dynamic Websites (Animal Guide) + PHP Solutions: Dynamic Web Design Made Easy
Price For All Three: $70.85

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

William Steinmetz is the author of LAN Party: Hosting the Ultimate Frag Fest (Wiley) and co-author of Paint Shop Pro for Dummies (IDG). He is the webmaster and editor of StarCityGames.com, where traffic has quadrupled as a result of the changes he designed and implemented, all using PHP.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 224 pages
  • Publisher: No Starch Press; 1 edition (February 16, 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1593271735
  • ISBN-13: 978-1593271732
  • Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.1 x 0.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #152,699 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Brian Ward
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
28 of 33 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I saw this book on a friends desk and shamelessly took it before he had a chance to read it. I have many php books on my bookshelf, too many. I can now remove quite a few and replace them with this book.

When I first glanced through this book, I was intrigued by the way it was laid out. There are 12 chapters covering many topics that php programmers should know about their language and how browsers interact with a web server using php. Each chapter has many sections that cover a specific topic and most have very useful code examples. The extra feature is a part labeled: "What can go Wrong?". This is a great time saver on how to deal with common issues that might come up when you are working on your php script and implementing the example code. Most of the issues have really good explanations of how and why something could go wrong. What makes this book a real keeper is that they have the "why" explanations. I've always hated it when books tell you to do something a certain way, but never go into any depth on WHY you should do it one way or another. This book has the WHY covered very well for a great number of the examples.

The style of the book makes it easy to read and learn from the examples. In my case, it makes it easy to pickup, read a few pages when I get the chance and then put it down again. I find it easy to pick up right where I left off and keep reading right on to the next example. I like the humor level too. Often authors can get a little too cutesy with their wit and humor. I find that to be a real turn off. William and Brian (The authors) do a great job of keeping the humor light and laughable.

I just made some room on my busy book shelf for this book of 76 time-saving, problem-solving php scripts. I hope my friend doesn't ask for it back...
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
good start.. March 21, 2010
Format:Paperback
This book is a good start to learning some cool php scripts, but I found myself spending lots of time on google and other sites to actually get any of it to work. A few apis are used that are outdated, like yahoo and google maps. Additionally, the book has quite a few spelling errors and at times can be hard to follow (ie. what function goes in what file, when did the author break code into multiple files, etc. If you don't mind looking around online, this book gives you some neat ideas for cool php scripts.
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25 of 30 people found the following review helpful
Become A PHP WaRRioR!!! March 19, 2008
Format:Paperback
'Wicked Cool PHP: Real-World Scripts That Solve Difficult Problems' is a fantastic PHP cookbook that is written exactly the way I like books to be written:

- it's fun to read and learn from
- content is broken up logically at the right points
- layout and design is a joy on the eyes and brain
- length is around 200 pages which is within the 2-3 (hundred) range that I like most books to be

Content is broken up over 12 chapters:

01. Basic script stuff
02. Configuring PHP
03. PHP Security
04. Form Fun
05. Text & HTML
06. Dates
07. Files
08. User and Session Tracking
09. Email Excitement
10. Image Tasks
11. Using cURL to talk to web services
12. Other Stuff

The audience for this book hits the rare area of ALL developers from the expert to the newbie to the weekend hacker. There are 76 scripts contained within that nearly anyone could find useful in any project.

I love No Starch books because they don't feel like reference materials, rather they package it in a fun way from the glossy cover to smart design. No Starch gets 'it' when it comes to what geeks want and PHPites you will WANT this book!!

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Excellent resource
This is a great resource for beginning PHP developers, although most of the information is probably already known by more skilled practitioners (with the possible exception of some... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Phillip Copley
Great Reference/guide
An excellent reference with over 75 php scripts for the novice and experienced web developer alike. I liked the clear, plain language explanations for each script and the structure... Read more
Published 14 months ago by Barry R. Lung
Good Book
A very good book. It's not a huge reference manual, rather a collection of short but useful solutions to common problems in PHP development. Read more
Published 15 months ago by BRC
None of the scripts worked for me
I like the idea of this book but none of the scripts worked for me without modification. I had to adjust every one, which was a challenge since I was trying to use this book to... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Marie Guglielmo
This Goes With Me Everywhere
Great tips and easily-forgotten tricks. Easy to read and *very* easy-to-understand samples.

That said, I do have 6+ years PHP under my belt, as a beginner I may have... Read more
Published 20 months ago by C. Crone
Save your money
This is probably the first time reviews on amazon completely failed me. if you have any coding experience at all, php or otherwise, move on. Read more
Published on March 23, 2010 by knrd
Good reference book
This is an excellent reference book with lots of good chunks of PHP code to incorporate quickly and easily into new or existing code. Read more
Published on March 5, 2010 by Gilbert Baca
Wicked Cool PHP - Great Book!
This book offered me examples i badly needed to complete my online class assignment project.

The examples are easy and well explained, so buying this book will not... Read more
Published on November 10, 2009 by Pule Nong
Excellent cookbook for both new and expereinced coders
I have coded a good deal in PHP and read a lot of literature on the language along the way. On one's way of coding this or that web site most programmers run across the same... Read more
Published on October 21, 2009 by Rolf Ernst
Nicely laid out but not Wicked Cool
Pros: The book is fun and easy to ready.
Cons: Teaches some bad coding styles and has a number of spelling mistakes. eg. Read more
Published on September 9, 2009 by Chris Geo
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Search Inside This Book:
Inside This Book (learn more)
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
intermediate projects, magic quotes, file permissions, bold text, browser info, curl setopt, php print, default dictionary, session tracking, login system, current timestamp, configure command
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Life-The Scripts Every, Uploading Images, American Express, Adding Extensions, Programmer Wants, Internet Explorer, Shivan Dragons, Happy Birthday, Encrypting Data, Netscape Navigator, Hacking the Script There
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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