How to Do Everything with PHP and MySQL (Paperback)

by Vikram Vaswani (Author) "If you think back a little, you'll remember how the Web first began, with static HTML pages on which image maps and animated GIFs were..." (more)
Key Phrases: Alfred Hitchcock, Maltese Falcon, North By Northwest (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
A great book for someone who knows little about MySQL and PHP and wants to quickly get on with producing some database driven dynamic web pages. Oraclehome.co.uk 20050805

Product Description
This new release in the popular How to Do Everything series explains how to build open source web applications with MySQL and PHP 5. Using these two tools, you’ll be able to create highly functional, interactive web sites easily. Follow along with a step-by-step sample application and, as a bonus, download three full-length case studies complete with code trees.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media; 1 edition (March 31, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0072257954
• ISBN-13: 978-0072257953
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #782,675 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Laziest PHP book ever., December 30, 2005

By	Nathan "p00kie" (Seattle WA) - See all my reviews

I won't pretend to debate this authors knowledge of the php language. For all I know he could be a genious with it. However the material is presented very poorly and lazily. The author frequently gives half-baked explainations of functions or concepts in the php language and then tells me if I want to learn more to goto the php documentation manual. NEWS FLASH! If I wanted to learn from the poorly written documentation I would have been doing that already. People buy these books for the purpose of getting in depth explainations that go beyond documentation. People don't like to be told to goto a website for more information. Is this a book about php? Or a book about which of the official php documentation files I should read? The author was just too lazy to explain things.
While I agree that using online documentation is necessary, he tells you to go online and read the documentation almost every other page. Very poor explainations, and it's a pain in the butt to keep switching between the book and the browser to get a full understanding of the concepts. Don't waste your money.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A little bit disappointing, January 12, 2006

By	Olivier (Belgium) - See all my reviews

The good :
----------
- Well structured content
- The SQL part is not bad

The Bad :
---------
- hardly any explanation on why to use this or that function
- very bad programming style (= spaggetti code)
- gives you the example then you'll have to figure out how it works in a lot of cases

Conclusion :
------------
Not very enthousiast about this book, the SQL primer is nicely written (but a little limited), the php part is D-grade level..
If looking for a good book about php and mySql turn to the book edited by Worx (see my other review)

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Promises so much, a hugh let down, May 19, 2006

By	Mark (Australia) - See all my reviews

I skimmed through this book once, and I read the reviews here. I thought this book could not have been that bad. It is a well structured book (from reading the Titles and SubTitles). Then I started reading it in details - lucky I borrowed this book from the library.

This book started off so well. It promises "best practices", yet delivers very bad coding habits and taking shortcuts. The book outlines and titles were well designed, but the details were nothing more than, "Hay, here is the syntax, this is the usage plus some simple examples..., and you can use this to design database." Nothing that I couldn't find from the online PHP manual, and probably with better examples. Functions and keywords used were never explained properly. Its like, "Kid, now that I taught you addition, multiplication, subtraction and division.... You should be able to go out and solve the 2nd law of Thermodynamics because all mathematics built upon plus and minus."

Not only that you can't do "Everything" reading this book, having read it I think I know less PHP.

This book reflect badly on the publisher as well, I'd think twice buying similar book from them.