PHP Programming with PEAR: XML, Data, Dates, Web Services, and Web APIs (Paperback)

~ Schmidt Stephan (Author), (Author), Wormus Aaron (Author), Lucke Carsten (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

XML, Data, Dates, Web Services, and Web APIs

• Maximize your productivity through the use of proven, powerful, reusable PHP components
• In-depth coverage of a range of important PEAR packages
• Many code examples provide a clear and practical guidance

In Detail

PEAR is the PHP Extension and Application Repository, and is a framework and distribution system for reusable, high-quality PHP components, available in the form of "packages".

In this book, you will learn how to use a number of the most powerful PEAR packages available to boost your PHP development productivity. By focusing on these packages for key development activities, this book is an in-depth guide to getting the most from these powerful coding resources.

You will become a master of various PEAR packages that help you with the essential tasks of PHP development such as:

* Accessing databases with MDB2
* Displaying data in a range of formats (HTML, Excel spreadsheet, PDF)
* Creating and parsing XML documents
* Serializing PHP objects into XML, and unserializing XML documents to PHP objects
* Consuming and offering web services
* Accessing Web APIs including Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and Technorati

What you will learn from this book? Chapter 1 shows you how to access databases with the MDB2 package. You will learn:

* Connecting to the database, and instantiate objects
* Executing queries and fetching data
* MDB2 SQL abstraction; sequences, replace queries, sub-select support, prepared statements
* Using MDB2 modules
* Extending MDB2 to provide custom fetch and result classes, iterators, and modules

Chapter 2 explains how to use PEAR packages to display data . It teaches you:

* Creating powerful tables of data easily with the HTML_Table package
* Advanced table formatting with HTML_Table_Matrix
* Creating Excel spreadsheets dynamically with Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer
* Adding formatting to these spreadsheets including colors, patterns, formulae and number formatting
* Creating flexible, sortable grids of data with Structures_DataGrid
* Adding columns to the grid, control paging, select data sources, and renderers
* Using File_PDF to create PDF documents on the fly

Chapter 3 covers the usage of PEAR packages to work with XML and stresses on:

* Creating XML documents with XML_Util, XML_Fastcreate
* Transforming PHP objects to XML format with XML_Serializer
* Creating Mozilla applications with XML_XUL
* Parsing XML with XML_Parser
* Processing XML documents to PHP objects with XML_Unserializer
* Parsing RSS with XML_RSS

Chapter 4 is an extensive tutorial on working with web services and Web API's using PEAR packages. We cover the following topics:

* Consuming web services
* Consuming XML-RPC-based web services
* Accessing the Google API
* Searching blog entries with Services_Technorati
* Accessing the Amazon web service
* Accessing the Yahoo API
* Offering XML-RPC-based web services
* Offering SOAP-based web services
* Offering REST-based services using XML_Serializer


Chapter 5 covers PEAR's date and time functions using the PEAR::Calendar and PEAR::Date packages such as:

* Creating, manipulating, and comparing Date objects
* Data_Span arithmetic
* Handling timezones with Date_Timezone
* Keeping track of public holidays with Date_Holiday
* Using the Calendar class to display an HTML calendar

Approach

Packed with code examples, every topic is explained in a clear, practical way.

Who this book is written for?

This book is for PHP developers who want to maximize their productivity through the use of proven, high-quality, reusable PEAR components. Some experience of working with PEAR classes will prove helpful, and developers who've used PEAR before can find something new to delight them.

About the Author

Aaron Wormus
Carsten Lucke

Carsten Lucke studied computer-science at the University of Applied Sciences in Brandenburg, Germany. He is currently working as a software engineer for the software design and management AG (sd&m AG) in Munich, Germany. In his spare-time he writes articles for various magazines and contributes to the open-source community (especially PHP). He is the developer of a handful of PEAR/PECL packages, founder of the 3rdPEARty pear channel-server project (3rdpearty.net) and the tool-garage.de open-source and freeware project.

Stephan Schmidt
Stoyan Stefanov

Stoyan Stefanov is a Yahoo! web developer, Zend Certified Engineer, book author, and contributor to the international PHP community. He talks regularly about JavaScript, PHP, and other web development topics at conferences and his blog phpied.comand also runs a number of other sites, including JSPatterns.com - a site dedicated to exploring JavaScript patterns. Stoyan is the engineering lead of Yahoo's performance optimization tool 'YSlow', as well as other open-source tools and 'PEAR' libraries.

Product Details

• Paperback: 292 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (October 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1904811795
• ISBN-13: 978-1904811794
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #951,537 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars a cursory overview, October 23, 2006

By	M. Coughlin "Mike" (Westerly, RI United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The Chapter 2 Summary says: "the examples given cover only a small part of the functionality available within these very fully featured packages." That about sums this up ...

The cursory overviews may inspire an approach, but this books barely begins to address its subject matter. Example code is not, yet, up on the website. This has the look of being slapped together by four author specialists (a la Wrox gang-writing?) albeit with less depth ... hardly the "PHP Programming with PEAR" reference for which so many of us were waiting ...