PHP Black Book

by Peter Moulding (Author)

19 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-1588800534

ISBN-10: 1588800539

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The PHP Black Book is a complete and indispensable reference to the PHP open source scripting language version 4. Embedded in HTML documents, PHP scripts create active server pages. This cross-platform book covers the language syntax, standard library, and integration with various databases including open source databases such as PostreSQL and MySQL. Explores issues such as internationalization, XML integration, and LDAP.

About the Author

Peter Moulding (Sydney, Australia) has 25 years of experience building what are now called Web sites on mainframes, minis, and micro systems as a business owner, technical manager, and developer. He has been using PHP since version 2.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Coriolis Group (October 11, 2001)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 880 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1588800539
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1588800534
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.3 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.25 x 2 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #7,475,626 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #15,838 in Computer Programming Languages
- #29,500 in Programming Languages (Books)
- #30,844 in Computer Software (Books)

Customer Reviews:
19 ratings

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Customer reviews

5 star		32%
4 star		38%
3 star		10%
2 star		10%
1 star		10%

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stephen

PHP

Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2020

Verified Purchase

fantastic read, great amazon service..

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Mr Junkman

Four Stars

Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2016

Verified Purchase

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Marie O

Informational

Reviewed in the United States on December 26, 2012

Verified Purchase

I bought this along with other reads as I was starting my own business out of college. There was a lot of good information and material.

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Jodie Ray Kelley

It's a good book but...

Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2002

Verified Purchase

I found the PHP Black Book useful and informative, but it left me wanting a reference manual. It has some helpful code examples and a lot of great insights, but it doesn't give you the level of documentation on the functions you would need to write more complex code. Buy the PHP Black Book, but buy a reference manual, too.

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S. Hoyer

A few decent examples... but that's about it

Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2002

I bought this book expecting it to be an exhaustive resource on how to start programing with PHP. I went into it with relatively little knowledge of server side programing, but the back of the book promised to fill me in on all the relevant details. It didn't.
The book is organized into chapters on general subjects with an "intermediate solutions" and a "in depth" section in each. While it might make some sense for a book, the organization makes reading the book chronologically not work at all. Even the reference is shody at best, very irratic. It includes reference to virtually useless date functions for coverting between dates in the jewish and the roman calenders in the second chapter! The section on the MySQL database includes how to insert rows into a database and create tables, but not how to update or delete entries! Such erratic relevance is present throughout the book - there are many several page long sections which give a one sentense long description to an entire class of rarely used functions. Not only are the functions not especially useful, but the brief and cursory explainations mean that one would have to use another reference material to get them working in the first place. Additionally, many excerpts of complex code are presented without sufficient explaination of the basic concepts behind them. It's not explained well enough to impart a mastery of the skills upon the reader. The book sets out to be both a teaching tool and a reference material, but fails miserably on both accounts. One would be far better off merely learning the stuff at the PHP.net, as I was told when I asked on usenet for recommendation of a book and I foolishly ignored. At least the reference there is complete. Some subjects that are important today (that may not have been at the time of writing), such as setting register_globals to off in the php.ini settings are not even mentioned in the book.
The other annoying aspect of the book is the author's sense of humor and his stories. As was mentioned in another review, it's fine if the material is good, but really is just fluff that covers up holes. His disdain for JavaScript is understandable, but uncalled for. When an author poorly describes even just the basics of a programing language, his extra comments aren't appreciated nor helpful. We'll be writing code that works worse than the poorly writen code of so called "professional" websites that he mentions his hate for many times, with only his book as a resource.
Yes, the book does have a few useful excerpts and sections, but until the reader has a well educated knowledge of the subject, far beyond what the book imparts, it doesn't help at all. There's no compensation for the gaping holes in the text.

5 people found this helpful

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Kenneth McDowell

Definitely not the book for me

Reviewed in the United States on November 1, 2002

This book belongs in the bargain shelf, which is where I found it recently at the local Borders. I paid ... for it brand new, drastically reduced from ....
The largest problems I had were: missing example code, incorrect code, missing critical information, and too much author ballyhooing. Also, the included CD did not work, it was corrupt.
In numerous instances, the author builds from one concept to the next, adding in more complex capabiilites. Unfortunately, the author often fails to provide the complete resultant code, leaving the reader to attempt at guessing at the correct code. Case in point...page 347...no print function is given. Thus the preceding code examples are useless if you do not have the experience to figure it out, which I didn't.
Incorrect code...some of the stuff that is in here is just plain wrong. Copied verbatim from the pages, the code just flat out does not work.
Missing Information: The chapters explain about 75% of what you need to know to be successful. Missing info, for example, in the email and form sections makes the chapters incomprehensible. There is nothing to bring them together to use forms and emailing together. I had to go online to get these concepts and required code and config changes to make it work.
Lastly, the author spends a lot of time making jokes, which is fine, if your work is absolutely complete and accurate. The humor becomes more droll as the mistakes and errors pile up.
Lastly, Coriolis is apparently no longer in business. When I found out the CD was corrupt, I immediately emailed the "email address" in the book for assistance, possibly to get a new CD. In short order I got an email error message back stating the email address ... did not exist. I then browsed to ... Nothing. After a Google search on "Coriolis Group", I finally found the news that this company no longer exists, and is now under the control of some cheezy-named publishing company, supposedly the original two guys are now back in charge. I don't know the gory details about the company politics, but their "new" website is beyond boring, and offered no help for us trying to make heads nor tails over this book.
To make a long story short, don't buy this book. There are too many other great resources out there.

6 people found this helpful

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Firebright

This is an excellent intermediate php book.

Reviewed in the United States on March 25, 2002

I got this book as a christmas present from my mother (how's that for geekiness -- it's all I wanted for christmas!).
I've used it extensively to help me write a content mgmt system, helpdesk, and filemaker/php xml integration. It's been a real gem. Now, it's not for those who need to learn, and some of the bad reviews for the book reflect this. And I think he moves along a little fast sometimes, as many authors tend to.
But this book is basically organized into 1) intelligent discussion 2) class diagrams and useful information on what's built into php and 3) excellent howto examples with code.
It's a great hands-on guide for building, and I reccomend it for those looking for a great desktop reference.
To the author: good job
Status: We definitely reccomend this book to intermediate php coding clients in our hosting company.

2 people found this helpful

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