Professional PHP4 Web Development Solutions 0th Edition
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The PHP programming techniques are be presented in such a manner that readers would be able to extrapolate the techniques (from both the theory and the case studies) for their own applications.
Editorial Reviews
From the Publisher
What this book covers:
*Creating an association directory using XML markup and a MySQL Database *Creating a BOMP Server using PHP with MySQL and PEAR::DB *Building a PDA/wireless Store Directory application using PHP-Lib *Creating a job board using PHP, WML,MySQL and Smarty *Building a paranormal news story server using PHP, MySQL, and Smarty *Creating a web corpus with simple PHP scripts *Building a classified ads board with PHP, MySQL and Smarty *Building both a simple and an advanced content management system using PHP, MySQL, and XML *Building a search engine for dynamic sites using PHP, MySQL, and PHP-Lib *Building a complete three-tier, multi-client wireless MyStuff server *Building a PHP/MySQL based Genealogy database server *Building a robust site architecture using the PostNuke content management system
About the Author
Matt Anton (LAMP is literally his middle name) is a computer consultant and freelance writer. He has worked as a co-author on Professional Apache 2.0 and Professional PHP4 XML from Wrox Press. His technology interests include XML, Mac OS X, J2EE technologies, and other web site deployment issues
Bryan Waters, a freelance software developer specializing in web-based corporate information systems. He uses PHP, ASP, C++, and Java with database servers such as SQL Server, SQL Anywhere, and MySQL to develop distributed, stand-alone and CD-ROM software for the Medical, Hospitality, and Education industries. He has authored several books on technologies like MFC and OLE 2 and published articles in various trade magazines.
Alison Gianotto (better known in many dubious circles as "snipe") has been a professional geek for 8 years, and has been working with PHP for approximately 4 years. Prior to moving to San Diego to accept the position of technical director at a prominent web development firm, she taught advanced web programming and computer graphics in Brooklyn, NY.
Jo Henrik Endrerud is a developer currently living in Skien, Norway.Jo Henrik is a long time Linux developer, currently working on the Open Source content management system: eZ publish. He has been working on projects ranging from small company websites to multilingual sites with hundreds of thousand of articles, where he has done everything from systems integration to project management.
Daniel Solin is a technical writer, reviewer, consultant, and programmer and Linux?enthusiast from Sweden. He has been programming Linux applications and web pages since 1994, and has in this time obtained a broad experience of most technologies used in these areas. When it comes to writing, Daniel has written a book about developing applications using Qt, a C++ GUI library, and he has also been a co-author for several books about Linux. From time to time, he also writes articles about bleeding-edge web development or programming in general. For the last two years, Daniel has been developing various software for one of Europe's largest ISPs.
Jon Stephens is American technical writer, reviewer, and site developer now living and working in Australia. He works with a number of web technologies, including PHP, JavaScript, MySQL, XML, and ASP (occasionally). He's co-authored 5 previous books on various topics in Web development; this is his third for Wrox Press. Jon was a community leader at the Builder Buzz web development forums for several years, and is now a co-administrator for the new HiveMinds.Info project.
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Product details
- Publisher : Apress; 0 edition (November 1, 2002)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 500 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1861007434
- ISBN-13 : 978-1861007438
- Item Weight : 2.2 pounds
- Dimensions : 7.5 x 1.75 x 9 inches
- Customer Reviews:
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BUT, it never really stops to explain the actual coding. It takes time to explain only the approach they take to the problem and the rationale for their approach. It assumes you understand the code and moves right along. You will not find ANY hand-holding here.
Moreover, of the solutions presented, at least two use XML. So, you might also want to have some xml skills on hand, if you are to make use of a significant part of this book.
Once again, the book seems good and you can learn from it. But, understand that you need a solid php foundation to effectively use this book.
The book, after some expository material, details 11 projects of increasing complexity. They use PHP, MySQL, PEAR::DB, Smarty and PHPLib. The target audience, according to the book jacket, are programmers who already have a good knowledge of PHP, SQL Databases and XML. Frankly, I think they overdo the amount of experience you need to use and benefit from this book. If you are on top of all those topics well enough to consider yourself "professional" then this book may be too simple. If, on the other hand, you are, like me, conversant with PHP and SQL but would like to take yourself up to "professional" use of technologies like XML, templating and WAP enabling then this book will be good.
The book is stuffed full of code examples -- and while you can download them in a ZIP file of over 3Mb you shouldn't think of this book as a "cookbook" as such. It shows various methods for performing most of the tasks you need to build solid backend web site systems to deal with a large variety of data. The projects cover importing and exporting of XML, messaging systems, forums, content management, using templates for both HTML and WML, search facilities and both simple and complex content management among other topics.
One thing I did appreciate about this book is how much they left out. No coverage of PHP fundamentals, SQL fundamentals and simple stuff like web forms might be covered once, at most. I certainly didn't need another book on my shelves explaining the basics.
My largest criticism of this book is one shared by too many modern titles for computer programmers; there is too much explanation and too much repetition. The section on SQL is the perfect example. Most projects contain some tables describing each database table, a diagram of the relationships and then the full SQL required to build them, their indices and some example data. For their proposed target audience this is way too much information, and as it is safe to assume that everyone who buys this book has a decent `net connection, why put a printout of SQL available online in a PHP book? I could have easily written the SQL myself and having it in the book doesn't make it much easier and since it was available online it was a total waste of space.
I also have to take exception to, an (admittedly short) chapter devoted to installing and configuring PostNuke. It gives you no more information on this simple task than the online documentation. As someone who has installed PostNuke a couple of times and never needed any assistance beyond the readme files (and the first was long before I considered myself a good PHP programmer) I felt this was a complete waste of space and not "web development" at all.
My final criticism is once again shared by too many modern titles, there isn't really enough discussion of the design decisions and complications. There are enough code examples and walk throughs to satisfy anyone, but not enough key design decisions are discussed at all, with only a few short examinations of any real design problems. I would have appreciated some walk throughs of such things as code that was too slow, problems with race conditions, methods for mixing static and generated parts of a site and all the real world stuff that intrudes when your site gets slashdotted and that code that was so neat with a hundred visitors a day becomes a thousand. Then show how the code they provide is better, avoids the problems and how to get my code to the same state. Since this book is "professional" a little more real world, please.
Both the books were informative in their own right
o The WROX book offered complete solutions to real world problems - a Simple/advanced CMS (the core of which you can plug into your site), a simple search engine, a classified ads board, and lots of cool creative case study solutions that i could extend to use in my hobby sites. The content was very enterprising and all of the solutions presented are the most popular one's amongst web developers these days. More interesting is that these solutions can be completely re-used and extended into your projects. However, the downside of this book is that you would need to have prior PHP knowledge either picked up from WROX' Professional PHP 4 (as is mentioned as a pre-requisite in the book) or from the Programming PHP ORA, or any another competent professional PHP programming books in the market.
o The ORA book had small snippets of code based solutions (very similar to the PHP Developers cookbook from Sterling and Andrei) that are very useful for programmers who are confounded with small to medium coding problems. However, there was nothing enterprising about the coverage, that one could not achieve from using a combination of the online docs + mailing lists. Another downside was that i could not find full solutions that i could re-use in my projects.
On the Other hand, i found
So the bottomline is:
oCare for a full meal - Pick up the Wrox book.
oCare for an appetiser - Pick up the ORA book.
I am posting this same review for both the books (so customers can benefit from it). However, i have ranked the Wrox book, a notch above this one, simply because i wanted a burp:-)

