Wicked Cool PHP: Real-World Scripts That Solve Difficult Problems (Paperback)

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Key Phrases: intermediate projects, magic quotes, file permissions, Life-The Scripts Every, Uploading Images, American Express (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

PHP is an easy-to-use scripting language perfect for quickly creating the Web features you need. Once you know the basics of how the language works, wouldn't it be great to have a collection of useful scripts that solve those tricky problems and add interesting functionality to your site? We thought so, too.

Instead of starting at "Hello World," Wicked Cool PHP assumes that you're familiar with the language and jumps right into the good stuff. After you learn the FAQs of life-the most commonly wished for PHP scripts-you'll work your way through smart configuration options and the art of forms, all the way through to complex database-backed scripts.

Wicked Cool PHP contains a wide variety of scripts to process credit cards, check the validity of email addresses, template HTML, and serve dynamic images and text. The 76 easily implemented scripts will also teach you how to:

Send and receive email notifications

Track your visitors' behavior with cookies and sessions

Override PHP's default settings

Manipulate dates, images, and text on the fly

Harness SOAP and other web services

Create an online poll, ecard delivery system, and blog

But it's not all fun and games: Security is a big concern when programming any web application. So you'll learn how to encrypt your confidential data, safeguard your passwords, and prevent common cross-site-scripting attacks. And you'll learn how to customize all of the scripts to fit your own needs.

Dynamic Web content doesn't have to be difficult. Learn the secrets of the craft from two experienced PHP developers with Wicked Cool PHP.

About the Author

William Steinmetz is the author of LAN Party: Hosting the Ultimate Frag Fest (Wiley) and co-author of Paint Shop Pro for Dummies (IDG). He is the webmaster and editor of StarCityGames.com, where traffic has quadrupled as a result of the changes he designed and implemented, all using PHP.

Brian Ward is the author of How Linux Works, The Book of VMware, and The Linux Problem Solver (all No Starch Press).

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: No Starch Press; 1 edition (February 9, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593271735
• ISBN-13: 978-1593271732
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #17,011 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great resource for PHP programmers, March 26, 2008

By	Jay Taylor (Twin Cities, MN) - See all my reviews

I saw this book on a friends desk and shamelessly took it before he had a chance to read it. I have many php books on my bookshelf, too many. I can now remove quite a few and replace them with this book.

When I first glanced through this book, I was intrigued by the way it was laid out. There are 12 chapters covering many topics that php programmers should know about their language and how browsers interact with a web server using php. Each chapter has many sections that cover a specific topic and most have very useful code examples. The extra feature is a part labeled: "What can go Wrong?". This is a great time saver on how to deal with common issues that might come up when you are working on your php script and implementing the example code. Most of the issues have really good explanations of how and why something could go wrong. What makes this book a real keeper is that they have the "why" explanations. I've always hated it when books tell you to do something a certain way, but never go into any depth on WHY you should do it one way or another. This book has the WHY covered very well for a great number of the examples.

The style of the book makes it easy to read and learn from the examples. In my case, it makes it easy to pickup, read a few pages when I get the chance and then put it down again. I find it easy to pick up right where I left off and keep reading right on to the next example. I like the humor level too. Often authors can get a little too cutesy with their wit and humor. I find that to be a real turn off. William and Brian (The authors) do a great job of keeping the humor light and laughable.

I just made some room on my busy book shelf for this book of 76 time-saving, problem-solving php scripts. I hope my friend doesn't ask for it back...

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Become A PHP WaRRioR!!!, March 19, 2008

By	Daniel McKinnon (Tewksbury, MA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

'Wicked Cool PHP: Real-World Scripts That Solve Difficult Problems' is a fantastic PHP cookbook that is written exactly the way I like books to be written:

- it's fun to read and learn from
- content is broken up logically at the right points
- layout and design is a joy on the eyes and brain
- length is around 200 pages which is within the 2-3 (hundred) range that I like most books to be

Content is broken up over 12 chapters:

01. Basic script stuff
02. Configuring PHP
03. PHP Security
04. Form Fun
05. Text & HTML
06. Dates
07. Files
08. User and Session Tracking
09. Email Excitement
10. Image Tasks
11. Using cURL to talk to web services
12. Other Stuff

The audience for this book hits the rare area of ALL developers from the expert to the newbie to the weekend hacker. There are 76 scripts contained within that nearly anyone could find useful in any project.

I love No Starch books because they don't feel like reference materials, rather they package it in a fun way from the glossy cover to smart design. No Starch gets 'it' when it comes to what geeks want and PHPites you will WANT this book!!

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great jump start into the world of PHP, May 12, 2009

By	GJ Caesar (Charlotte, NC) - See all my reviews

I had a background in HTML/CSS and Actionscript but had never done much with PHP. I was looking for a book with simple, real world examples that would get me moving in the right direction. This was that book. After quickly digesting several of the short, well written chapters, I was able to do a few things that I wanted to do as well as several things I never dreamed of. This book gave me enough of a start that I now feel comfortable using the vast array of free PHP resources available on the web to continue my learning. This is a not a reference manual or a tome on PHP/MySQL application development, but it's a great entry into working with PHP.