PHP and MySQL Web Development (4th Edition) [Paperback]

I'm an experienced C/C++ programmer on Windows, but I knew nothing about PHP and MySQL -- and very little about Apache and Unix -- prior to opening this book. I've now read about 80% of it and, in the process, I've built a commercial-grade Website with user registration and shopping cart facilities, which was my objective. Reading this book was a very efficient use of my time -- it gave me exactly what I needed to build a practical Web application system with PHP and MySQL, and very little extraneous stuff.

The main prerequisite for this book is a working knowledge of HTML, and just a little background in procedural programming. Some of the earliest examples use HTML tags for tables and forms, with PHP use thoroughly explained, but without many notes on the HTML. A beginning programmer can learn effectively from this book, but as an experienced programmer I felt that it also worked well to bring me up to speed quickly on a new language.

Another value of this book not mentioned in other reviews are the many good recommendations for organizing your PHP code (applying basic software engineering principles) as your Web application gets larger and more complex. Many, many Websites have been built haphazardly and are now difficult to maintain because they haven't followed the excellent advice in this book.

I did notice the typos mentioned by other reviewers, but after reading 80% of this (867-page) book I feel they are very minor and really do not detract from the book significantly at all.

All in all, this is one of those rare books that is probably worth ten times the amount that you pay for it, and much more if you use it effectively.

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Sams: The Welling and Thomson book is more "hands-on" in that it takes the reader step-by-step in developing an e-commerce website. The chapters are organized in a goal-oriented manner: PHP, MySQL, the basics of e-commerce, security, and design of the site.

O'Reilly: The Williams and Lane book is structured in a similar way by showing readers PHP and then MySQL. Examples to reinforce concepts are also provided. While the O'Reilly book also tries to take the reader in developing an e-commerce site, it is a bit more theoretical. Also, there are some differences in focus: the O'Reilly book has a section on using JavaScript while the Sams book has a final chapter on creating PDF files using PHP.

If I had to choose just one book, I would go with the Sams book due to its more gentle learning curve. However, I believe that the O'Reilly book is no slouch, and I will probably come to appreciate it more once I gain more experience in PHP and MySQL development.

One last word about my programming background: I knew a bit of Perl, Java, HTML, and JavaScript before tackling PHP and MySQL. I consider myself to be an "advanced beginner" (an oxymoron, of course). To get the most out of these two books, you should know HTML well enough to read it (you should at least recognize some tags) and it would definitely be helpful if you have some programming experience. You could very well make PHP your first programming language, but I would advise against it. Start with something like Perl (whose syntax is very similar to PHP's).

I highly recommend both books to prospective PHP and MySQL developers who are willing to spend some time and effort.

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It provides it's message to the windows crowd, which in itself is a beautiful concept; usually books about php and mysql are directed at unix users (rightfully so, I admit). I am a user of windows, and the php installation instructions for either the windows build of Apache or MS IIS were definately adequate.

The php crash course chapter is an especially good reference. For example, other books I've purchased on php ignored some of the useful variations of the if-then control structure. The chapter on php session control was beautifully simple, although at first it came as a surprise, since other php books didn't cover it (session control was first implemented in php 4.0).

I did have some difficulty installing and using the gd image library, since most of the sites listed in the book didn't exist. Windows users, just remember that the php.ini file needs to be edited (remove the semicolon before the gd dll) and the gd dll needs to be moved into the php working directory. Of course, maybe that's intuitive and I'm just a moron.

In conclusion, it's a good book.

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