jQuery 1.3 with PHP [Paperback]

Kae Verens (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1847196985 | ISBN-13: 978-1847196989 | Publication Date: October 26, 2009

This book takes a practical approach to integrating PHP and jQuery, showing examples of every point discussed. All examples are written such that you should be able to copy out the code into your own projects and see immediate results, no matter what your experience with JavaScript. You will find projects developed within a chapter, building them up step-by-step, describing the process and thought that goes into it. Minimal requirements are needed on the server-side, so the examples should work with any setup. This book is for PHP application developers who want to improve their user interfaces through jQuery's capabilities and responsiveness. Whether you are familiar with jQuery or have only dabbled a little with JavaScript, this book will provide you with numerous practical examples of how to improve your application.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kae Verens

Kae Verens has worked in software and web site development for over 11 years, and is an owner-manager of a web-design company in Ireland. He enjoys writing innovative solutions for customer problems, and taking existing software and improving on it.

Kae is the original author of KFM, a very popular PHP and jQuery file manager. He is also the primary developer of Webworks WebME, a user-friendly CMS, and is secretary of the Irish PHP Users Group.

When not being paid to code, Kae is a husband and is father to two children, and is learning to play the piano and write music.

Product Details

• Paperback: 248 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (October 26, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1847196985
• ISBN-13: 978-1847196989
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,391,599 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Written from the perspective of a php developer, December 15, 2009

By 

Cody Lindley (Boise, ID United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: jQuery 1.3 with PHP (Paperback)

I have to admit that when I picked this book up I was hoping to learn a thing or two about php. However, after a careful read of the book's description any disappoint I felt was my own fault, as the author is very clear about the book's intentions. It's clear the author intended this book for readers who have already mastered php and are seeking additional knowledge about JavaScript/jQuery.

So, if you are a php developer who has never bothered to look over the fence at client-side coding practices, this book is ideally for you. If you are a JavaScript developer looking to learn a thing or two about PHP you might be frustrated as the author assumes you are already "good" at php development. Because of this assumption made by the author, very little insight into the php code is given. But, to the author's credit, he warns us about this fact upfront.

Regardless of your knowledge of php or JavaScript/jQuery, this book does an excellent job at presenting many of the patterns and concepts centered around using AJAX and UI patterns to eliminate complete page reloads. I enjoyed the coded examples in spirit more than I enjoyed reading the code. While the JavaScript code gets the job done, I found the use of the custom DOM ready event to be unnecessary, as well as the organization of functions in the global window scope to be a bit dangerous. On the positive side, I did get the impression that the author understood jQuery completely and utilized the library efficiently and effectively.

In my opinion, this is a great book for a very specific type of reader. And that reader would be a php developer who is disconnected to what's been going on with JavaScript and client-side coding paradigms common in today's web development world.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice collection, February 24, 2010

By 

Mario Rimann (Schweiz) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: jQuery 1.3 with PHP (Paperback)

Kae Verens put together a long list of cool ideas what can be accomplished by jQuery and PHP. I was surprised that stuff like the form-validation can be configured in one place and used both on the frontend with jQuery and serverside with PHP. Also the addon to create a fully features calendar was awesome!

The book is written as a cook-book and features many walk-trough solutions for common issues. If you're looking for a full reference of jQuery, that's not the right book for you. But if you're looking for solutions and inspiration, grab that book!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beef up your web apps with jQuery., February 15, 2010

By 

Andrew E. Stratton "Sizeable Interactive" (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: jQuery 1.3 with PHP (Paperback)

This book is a great resource for better than novice PHP programmers. It is not a step-by-step tutorial on jQuery, Javascript or PHP but rather a series of real-world examples of using jQuery and jQuery plugins to create a better user-experience. Topics including content hierarchy and organization using tabs/accordians, making AJAX requests to organize and pre-validate form data, building a simple calendar, managing files and uploading, image manipulation and more.

There is even a good chapter that quickly touches on the different aspects of optimizing your applications with things like caching, code re-use/organization and content delivery networks (CDN's).

All in all a great book for a PHP developer looking to beef up their web apps with jQuery. The book assumes you have a solid understanding of PHP programming and at least a dash of Javascript/jQuery experience. It'd be beneficial to do a few bare-bones jQuery tutorials before beginning and then dive in.