Core PHP Programming (Paperback)

by Leon Atkinson (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Core PHP Programming: Using PHP to Build Dynamic Web Sites begins with an introduction to PHP that rapidly moves through the language's constructs. In his introduction, author Leon Atkinson provides a taste of PHP's variable usage, user input, conditional branching, and looping functions in a very concise chapter. A series of topical chapters follow, which explore the language in depth, presenting operators, statements, and concepts. User-defined functions, arrays, and classes are all covered, as is the often tricky topic of disk access.

Part II of the book comprises a topical summary of PHP's built-in functions. This section begins with I/O functions of all types, followed by an analysis of data manipulation and mathematical functions. The chapter on database functions provides a good feel for PHP's extensible nature by discussing programming issues involved with using databases such as dBase, IMAP, LDAP, MySQL, ODBC, Oracle, and Sybase. Throughout all of these chapters, the author is careful to provide digestible, real-world examples for every function.

The final two parts of the book present programming algorithms and basic concepts in application design. Atkinson provides reusable algorithms for sorting and searching, string manipulation, database access, and graphic generation. He discusses how to use PHP with HTML and create applications that are intelligently modular. The accompanying CD-ROM provides the source code for book examples, PHP, Apache, and other programs to get you rolling quickly with this intriguing language. --Stephen W. Plain

From Library Journal
The next hot environment is going to be PHP, a server-side, cross-platform, HTML-embedded scripting language that is open source (free) and completely Y2K compliant. PHP code is embedded within HTML, and the files are saved with either .phtml or .php3 extensions. For readers with a programming background, this solid guide has four sections: a basic introduction to the programming environment, a PHP function reference, algorithms, and software engineering for integrating PHP with HTML and the cgi for interactive programming and database querying. For larger computer collections.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 450 pages
• Publisher: Pearson Education (May 7, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 013020787X
• ISBN-13: 978-0130207876
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (121 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,674,333 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A decent reference, though not as useful as the free manual, August 11, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Core PHP Programming: Using PHP to Build Dynamic Web Sites (2nd Edition) (Paperback)

This book does a solid job of listing the basic functions and descriptions and is aimed more at the beginner, so I would recommend it to someone who is just starting out with PhP and/or who may not want to be online all the time to get reference help. Experienced PhP programmers probably won't find enough in this book to warrant it's cost, but the beginner should definitely consider buying it.

This book is a nice reference but doesn't really have much beyond what you can find online. (which you can also download for free). In fact I find the online manual more helpful because of the annotations which make it a work in progress. It's a philosophical issue - do you like having a real book in your hands to browse through or do you not mind using a web browser?

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and comprehensive guide to PHP, September 15, 2000

By	Steve Benner "Stonegnome" (Lancaster, UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Core PHP Programming: Using PHP to Build Dynamic Web Sites (2nd Edition) (Paperback)

This is a wonderful book! I've had this nagging background need to learn PHP for some time and have been putting it off as one of those extra little tasks I could do without. After reading just a little of this book I couldn't wait to get started!

Leon Atkinson aims his book at both beginner and advanced users and his writing style manages to score a direct hit! The basics are covered in sufficient detail to allow the intelligent beginner to follow along and learn useful stuff pretty quickly. This is achieved without talking down to advanced users, or bogging them down in masses of simple things. The organisation and layout of the book is good enough to allow most readers to jump straight into the sections that interest them most, so if you just want to use this book for reference, rather than have it act as a tutor, you can. Lots of references to more elementary programming texts are provided for anyone who does find themself struggling with the concepts, but I can't really imagine anyone needing them.

Coverage is very comprehensive too, so you never find yourself left in the lurch just as things are about to get really interesting, as I've had happen in many books aimed at beginners. So far, this book has provided good solid instruction of every PHP task I've needed or fancied (although a better index wouldn't go amiss!) and has frequently provided me with a coded solution all ready to plug in and use! I can see that this volume will have a place alongside my computer for some time!

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not as bad as many think - for beginners, March 6, 2000

By	John Hsu (Boston) - See all my reviews

This book was the first of five I now own on the topic, and while many of the criticisms written previously here are accurate (especially the irritating example code which doesn't show you the resulting output), I still find myself pulling this one off the shelf because of some of its virtues :

1) It's a decent introduction to PHP, because it won't overwhelm the first-time web programmer, and pretty much assumes you don't know much of anything

2) Despite the amazingly disorgranized approach to the topic, certain sections are quite useful : regular expressions, various sorting methods, generating graphics on the fly, and basic approaches to integrating HTML & PHP are well covered.

3) Even though it's an apparent ploy to boost the page count of a book of somewhat shallow content depth, the fact that the type is larger than average with huge bold headlines for each function really helps if you're just flipping through looking for something specific.

4) The cover is actually attractive, unlike the usual monstrosity of a cover of Professional PHP Programming (why does WROX think we acutally want the faces of the authors staring up at you all the time ? ). OF course, Professional PHP Programming is far and away the best book on this topic if you have any programming experience.