Customer Reviews

You Want to Do What with PHP?

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

 

 

Not many PHP books begin with an Acknowledgments section written in the style of Medieval Literature with an English accent, but this one doth.

That is not the only original aspect to this book. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find a single unoriginal aspect to this PHP tome.

I warn you, these topics are not what I'd begin to learn PHP with...

Kevin is the technology evangelist for Zend...quite a famous company in the PHP world on the strength of the Zend engine and their newish Zend Framework. And he definitely stretches far beyond what most people do with the language...

If you're already a PHP developer you will learn something new. And you'll begin with a nice review of the OSI layer. Something I personally hadn't covered in many years....

I really enjoyed this book...if you're interested in using PHP for any of the following, definitely pick up a copy!:

Network protocols,

Character encoding,

Streams,

SPL,

Queuing,

Using ext2 filesystem,

Profiling...

You won't regret it...

Normally i do not write reviews. But in this case i will make an exception. Kevin did a great job in writing an interesting and challenging book full of useful and eye opening information.

It's been a while since i read a PHP related book. I have been doing PHP based development for the past 10 years. And after reading almost every book of value on this topic. It's hard to find something interesting to read about it. Most books just go over the basics. Or target a specific project / way of developing.

This book is a bit different from what i have read so far. And it will get a nice place near my other books of value. So what does make this book so different? First of all the topics that pass by are some of the more advanced topics you will come by in the PHP world. A lot of it is related to low level programming. So a bit of experience or interest in this subject is a must. Besides the advanced topics Kevin shows how to solve issues in ways i have never done them before. And that probably comes down to his experience with more low level languages like C.

He touches topics like Networking and sockets, Binary protocols, character encoding, streams, SPL, Asynchronous operations, file access, Daemons, And two great chapters about debugging, good development practises and just how to become a better developer in general. The book has a considerable amount of binary maths in it which is cool. And which is also needed when doing things like handling raw TCP/IP and TCP/UDP data, writing stream handlers or creating your own file-system.

Maybe not all of the material touched in the book is relevant to web development. And most of us will probably never have to write an HTTP daemon, network scanner or webcrawler in PHP. But the way Kevin tackles problems showed me things i never thought of before and new ways to attack old problems.

Ii just had a lot of fun reading this book. And would definitely advocate other developers to read it as well.

Before I can actually discuss the book itself I need to give a disclaimer, Kevin sent me a copy of the book as I'd won it in a giveaway on Twitter; I don't intend on showing favoritism due to that but I wanted to give a heads up.

First to begin with, I'm a professional developer in the PHP world and have been for quite some time, I've worked on rather large sites that span multiple data centers as well as SaaS applications and traditional applications crammed into the browser space. Cracking open this book, just within the first chapter, I've seen new approaches to old problems, doing things that I'd never thought about before, and doing things that I didn't quite know were possible (they still might not be logical, just a warning). Herein lies a problem, the level of detail that is covered can easily overwhelm someone, I've resorted to reading one or two chapters a weekend so I can properly process everything. Not withstanding, Kevin manages to cover several low level subjects in-depth (sockets, streams, etc) and for the most part his writing is engaging and somewhat entertaining, there were things skipped though, advanced topics that are referenced and not really covered in-depth (this is an issue as with PHP there aren't a lot of users who do bitwise operations, as an example, on a regular basis).

I would highly recommend this book to someone who's spent some time in the software development world and has some experience with C or advanced PHP topics, this is not a book for a beginner or those that don't have a good grasp on the fundamentals of computer science. Also take heed, this book covers things that you can do as an example of what's possible, just because you can do something doesn't always mean you should. i.e. Writing a HTTP Daemon in PHP vs. C/C++.

Kevin and I collaborated on another PHP book a few years ago. In the time we worked together I learned how much I still had to learn about PHP; he is truly a master. In this book Kevin presents the reader with a group of useful ways to really push the envelope of what PHP can do. It is well written and well thought out. A must read for anyone serious about taking their PHP skills to the next level.

I bought this book and expected to work on some advanced but useful PHP material. Unfortunately, even chapter one is incomprehensible. If the author's goal was to create a book that could be understood only by geniuses, he succeeded. 99 out of 100 people who buy this book will realize after the first ten pages that they've wasted their money. This is the absolute worst PHP book I've ever read. Well, maybe not as bad as any of Julie Meloni's PHP books, but this text is utterly useless.