PHP 5 Unleashed (Paperback)

by John Coggeshall (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The PHP language is in use today at over 12 million Internet domains worldwide, and continues to grow in popularity at an astonishing rate of almost 400,000 domains a month. The latest version, PHP 5, is in beta and is expected to reach final form by Q1 2004. It is a significant new release that speeds up performance, improves XML and streams support, and includes many new functions. PHP 5 increases the appeal of PHP to serious programmers who have not used it before, and it requires current PHP users to re-learn many things as to how they have approached PHP in the past.

PHP Developer's Handbook provides a complete, practical, and authoritative guide for both the experienced programmer who is considering PHP for the first time and the current PHP user who wants to learn more about PHP 5 and how to fully exploit all its new capabilities. The book begins with a detailed summary of the basics, and then quickly moves on to more advanced topics such as working with data, outputting graphical data, interacting with messaging servers, and building complete applications.

About the Author

PHP 5 Unleashed Lead Author

John Coggeshall is a Technical Consultant for Zend Technologies where he provides professional services to clients around the world. He got started with PHP in 1997 and is the author of two published books and over 100 articles on PHP technologies with some of the biggest names in the industry such as Sams Publishing, Apress and O'Reilly. John also is a active contributor to the PHP core as the author of the tidy extension, a member of the Zend Education Advisory Board, and frequent speaker at PHP-related conferences worldwide. His web site, http://www.coggeshall.org/ is an excellent resource for any PHP developer.

Contributing Authors

Christian Wenz is author or coauthor of more than three dozen books. He specializes in Web technologies, with focus on Web scripting languages and Web services. He frequently writes for IT magazines and speaks at national and international conferences. Christian maintains or co-maintains several PEAR packages and is Germany's very first Zend Certified Engineer. Christian contributed eight chapters to PHP 5 Unleashed. He lives and works in Munich, Germany.

Sara Golemon is an application developer at the University of California at Berkeley as well as a contributor to the PHP project and other Open Source applications. She helps maintain the PHP streams layer and miscellaneous core extensions and has made more than 400 individual contributions to the online manual, authoring entire reference sections and appendixes. Sara is also the lead developer of nine PECL extensions, including Runkit, Classkit, Parsekit, OggVorbis, and OpenAL.

J. Scott Johnson is the founder of Feedster.com, a leading provider of XML Search Services. He is also the founder of NTERGAID, Inc., and was previous Vice President of Engineering for Mascot, Network. He is a leading blogger, author, and software developer.

Ben Ramsey is a Technology Manager for Hands On Network, an international, non-profit volunteer organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. Before his move to the non-profit sector, he worked for four years as the Technology Director for Roswell, Georgia-based EUREKA! Interactive, Inc. With EUREKA!, he served as the software architect and lead programmer of numerous Web-based applications for local governments and small businesses. He is a Zend Certified Engineer and co-founder of Atlanta PHP.

Marco Tabini is the publisher of phparchitect (http://www.phparch.com), the premier magazine for PHP professionals, and has worked on websites for clients ranging from small startup operations to the Fortune 500s. Despite having been an IT industry professional for the last 15 years, he still manages to maintain a reasonable level of sanity–at least most of the time.

Aron Hsiao is a Linux enthusiast with over a decade of administrative Unix experience. He has worked in various capacities in network deployment, in software and web development, and in the online retail industry. He served as the About.com guide to Linux from 1997 through 2001 and holds a Masters degree in the Social Sciences from the University of Chicago. He is the author of The Concise Guide to XFree86 for Linux, Sams Teach Yourself Red Hat Desktop All In One, and other popular Linux titles.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 840 pages
• Publisher: Sams (January 7, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067232511X
• ISBN-13: 978-0672325113
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #254,009 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

• This item is part of The Unleashed Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Book For The Intermediate PHP Programmer, October 10, 2005

A Kid's Review

After reading a PHP5 book in the past I was happy with it. However it was for beginers. I searched for something more advanced. This was it. PHP5 Unleashed goes over several advanced topics. In example there is Regular Expressions (aka. Regex), Advanced MySQL techniches, accessing the OS's programs (Like dd, cp, etc) and more. One thing I should note as that there are some parts that can't be done on Windows. To get the most of this book you need Linux. ( If you want Linux download the ISO image of Fedora Core 4 at fedora.redhat.com. It is great for beginers to Linux. You can also use Mandrakelinux ([...]) but it isn't as simple to use.) Also note that this book has a section for new users but it is small and you should buy a book for beginers first. Might I recommend "PHP5 Fast & Easy Web Development" for novices.

A little disappointment is that this book shows you only how to INSTALL PEAR. It doesn't show you how to use it at all.

2.0 out of 5 stars Not for Beginning PHP Coders, January 25, 2009

By	Brad Smith (NC United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I am using this book for a college course I am taking. Having no experience with PHP, this book leaves a lot of questions for a beginner and can become very frustrating very quickly. Even following the code in the book and using a site set up to run PHP script, a lot of times the script that is written in the book does not run nor does the book do anything to show what the results of the script should do. Again for a beginner this becomes very frustrating and not very helpful to learn PHP code.

I am actually learning more from an older SAMS book, "Teach Yourself PHP4 in 24 hours", the only problem is we are trying to learn PHP5.

This is also become a problem for other students in the class as I have quickly learned. (Ranging from not knowing to use the .php extension to not knowing the code has to run on a computer or server with PHP installed) As I stated before, we are all Beginners dealing with the PHP script and what may seem obvious for more experienced PHP coders is not for first time coders, and this book does not even discuss these basics.

5.0 out of 5 stars alot of good stuff, October 12, 2008

By	Lee Thornton "Lee thornton" (Fort Lauderdale) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is your basic huge book of php concepts from the basics to the advanced. It reads more like a manual than a demonstration or tutorial.
I would recomend it to anyone looking to get a good overview of php 5