Upgrading to PHP 5 (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

If you're using PHP 4, then chances are good that an upgrade to PHP 5 is in your future. The more you've heard about the exciting new features in PHP 5, the sooner that upgrade is probably going to be. Although an in-depth, soup-to-nuts reference guide to the language is good to have on hand, it's not the book an experienced PHP programmer needs to get started with the latest release. What you need is a lean and focused guide that answers your most pressing questions: what's new with the technology, what's different, and how do I make the best use of it? In other words, you need a copy of Upgrading to PHP 5.

This new book is targeted toward PHP developers who are already familiar with PHP 4. Rather than serve as a definitive guide to the entire language, the book zeroes in on PHP 5's new features, and covers these features definitively. You'll find a concise appraisal of the differences between PHP 4 and PHP 5, a detailed look at what's new in this latest version, and you'll see how PHP 5 improves on PHP 4 code. See PHP 4 and PHP 5 code side-by-side, to learn how the new features make it easier to solve common PHP problems. Each new feature is shown in code, helping you understand why it's there, when to use it, and how it's better than PHP 4. Short, sample programs are included throughout the book.

Topics covered in Upgrading to PHP 5 include:
The new set of robust object-oriented programming features
An improved MySQL extension, supporting MySQL 4.1, prepared statements, and bound parameters
Completely rewritten support for XML: DOM, XSLT, SAX, and
SimpleXML
Easy web services with SOAP
SQLite, an embedded database library bundled with PHP 5
Cleaner error handling with exceptions
Other new language features, such as iterators, streams, and more.

Upgrading to PHP 5 won't make you wade through information you've covered before. Written by Adam Trachtenberg, coauthor of the popular PHP Cookbook, this book will take you straight into the heart of all that's new in PHP 5. By the time you've finished, you'll know PHP 5 in practice as well as in theory.

About the Author

Trachtenberg is working on getting an MBA from Columbia Business School. At business school, he's focusing on General Management and Operations, with an emphasis on the field of technology. He also has a BA from Columbia University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 327 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (July 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596006365
• ISBN-13: 978-0596006365
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,035,251 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Exactly what I needed, September 4, 2004

By	Foti Massimo (Vezia (Switzerland)) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Being fairly proficient on PHP 4 but looking for more info on version 5, the idea of getting books on PHP 5 that, once again, starts from scratch wasn't exciting at all. This book instead was exactly what I needed, it assume you know PHP 4 and covers only the new features with a good amount of details and a bunch of useful suggestions for code migration. The only reason I don't give it 5 stars is that in the chapters covering OOP and DOM the author try to explain the new functionalities but also attempt to throw in the mix more generic info on this two topics. The end results are somewhat mixed, the coverage of PHP 5 is, in my opinion, very good, but the material about OOP and DOM instead aren't up to the rest and does more harm than good.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome Book for PHP4 Developers!, August 5, 2004

By	Adam S (Orlando, FL) - See all my reviews

This is a fantastic book. I frequently find that when an existing developer buys a book, he/she has to sort through all the garbage review in the beginning. This book assumes you are a competent PHP4 programmer. Then it takes you step by step through new PHP5 syntax and features that are unique to PHP5. It reviews and explains Object Oriented Programming (OOP), then discusses a variety of PHP5-only concepts, like SimpleXML and SQLite.

I recently installed a PHP5 server and this book has been by my side since. All PHP4 developers who expect to use PHP5 within the next year or so should really have a copy of this book handy.

4.0 out of 5 stars Another Excellent Offering From O'Reilly, July 11, 2005

By	Conrad Shultz (Corvallis, OR) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I own a sizable collection of O'Reilly books and have found them to in general be very well written and useful. "Upgrading to PHP 5" continues this tradition superbly.

This book is _not_ for new PHP coders; the vast majority of the text assumes good familiarity with PHP 4.x. If you have this familiarity then you will find this book to be a thorough and well-organized primer on the many new features in the new PHP.

The first chapter merely lists the major areas that have changed in the latest PHP, each of which roughly corresponds to a chapter in the book.

Major enhancement to the OOP facilities of PHP are appropriately discussed in the next chapter. Unfortunately, this is probably the most clumsily written chapter due a strange desire to educate the reader in OOP basics (about the only place in the book where this mistake is committed). The result is a schism that imposes redundancy in the material while simultaneously making it unduly hard to locate specific topics.

Thankfully the subsequent two chapters (on the new MySQL interface and the SQLite database) are uniformly well-written. Especially useful is a (perhaps oddly-situated) section on migration strategies from a PHP 4/MySQL 4.0 platform to a PHP 5/MySQL 4.1 platform.

A chapter on XML follows, but I did not read it in great detail since my applications tend to not require it, so other reviewers are likely to provide greater insights here.

Iterators, yet another feature completely new to PHP 5, are covered next. Unlike much of the conventional PHP fare (even OOP) this topic really does require understanding of rather abstract concepts (especially when debugging the RecusrsiveIterator interface). For this reason, while clearly written it may take hobbiests some time to take this material to heart.

The new error-handling functions are introduced next. I think that the chapter could have benefited from a little more discussion; Trachtenberg seems to think providing code samples is almost self-explanatory. At the end of the day, though, the chapter does its job.

The chapter on streams and filters is another one that I barely perused, so I defer to other reviewers on this topic.

The penultimate chapter provides a very cursory evaluation of a handful of extensions to PHP. While certainly useful to the practicing PHP programmer they are covered in so brief a manner that you will need a separate text to implement them meaningfully. But this chapter does give enough information to at least evaluate the extensions' potential usefulness in an application.

Trachtenberg concludes with an example PHP application. I do not like such examples in books - between space limitations and the complexity of real life this and other examples feel too... contrived... to be worthwhile. But I understand that it is included practically as canon, and do not fault the author for its inclusion.

So, all things considered, this text covers the changes in PHP 5 in detail in a surprisingly brief 300 pages (and small page footprint). A worthy addition to a book collection, provided you already have general PHP reference available.