Beginning PHP and MySQL: From Novice to Professional
Beginning PHP and MySQL: From Novice to Professional, Fourth Edition is a major update of W. Jason Gilmore’s authoritative book on PHP and MySQL. The fourth edition includes complete coverage of PHP 5.3 features, including namespacing, an update of AMP stack installation and configuration, updates to Zend Framework, coverage of MySQL Workbench, and much more.
You’ll not only receive extensive introductions to the core features of PHP, MySQL, and related tools, but you’ll also learn how to effectively integrate them in order to build robust data-driven applications. Gilmore has seven years of experience working with these technologies, and he has packed this book with practical examples and insight into the real-world challenges faced by developers. Accordingly, you will repeatedly return to this book as both a valuable instructional tool and reference guide.
What you’ll learn
- How to install and configure Apache, PHP 5.3, and MySQL
- PHP and object-oriented programming basics
- New PHP 5.3 features and how to use them
- How to move beyond basic PHP, including using the Zend Framework
- How to use MySQL to securely store your website’s data
- How to use MySQL Workbench to manage your database
Who this book is for
Developers who want to harness PHP and MySQL to create powerful web applications
Table of Contents
- Introducing PHP
- Configuring Your Environment
- PHP Basics
- Functions
- Arrays
- Object-Oriented PHP
- Advanced OOP Features
- Error and Exception Handling
- Strings and Regular Expressions
- Working with the File and Operating System
- PEAR
- Date and Time
- Forms
- Authenticating Your Users
- Handling File Uploads
- Networking
- PHP and LDAP
- Session Handlers
- Templating with Smarty
- Web Services
- Secure PHP Programming
- Integrating jQuery and PHP
- Building Web Sites for the World
- MVC and the Zend Framework
- Introducing MySQL
- Installing and Configuring MySQL
- The Many MySQL Clients
- MySQL Storage Engines and Datatypes
- Securing MySQL
- Using PHP with MySQL
- Introducing PDO
- Stored Routines
- MySQL Triggers
- MySQL Views
- Practical Database Queries
- Indexes and Searching
- Transactions
- Importing and Exporting Data
List Price: $ 49.99
Price: $ 25.40
[Third Edition Review] Broad coverage except in XML manipulation,
This book is written for someone who is familiar with other programming languages and databases and now wants to use PHP and MySQL. It is not written for somebody completely new to programming. For example, if you came from Perl or ASP, and you wanted to know how arrays, loops, and objects in PHP, this book will cover that.
The topic coverage is broad but not deep. The book has a feel of “semi-reference” in that each topic stands on its own. This is not a cookbook or “learn by example” book. There is enough information to get you started, but if you have a complex/niche problem, this book will not help you. For more information, you will have to consult books that specialize on the topic you are interested.
I have one major gripe with this book. There is not any significant coverage of XML manipulation or XSL/XSLT aspects of PHP. When you look at the table of contents or index, there is no mention of XSL/XSLT and only a brief mention of XML (and RSS) in the Web Services chapter. For a book that covers a lot of subjects, this is a weak area.
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|Bloated and wordy,
I’m a sucker for a good price and I bought this book hoping that in the 1000+ pages I could start to learn PHP. I did – but I also quickly got frustrated and distracted by the author’s complete refusal to explain ANYTHING with conciseness.
This is a reference book, not something you’d want to read cover to cover.
Boring examples, wordy discussions – the authors seems to have been more interested in boosting page count than anything else
Another bloated PHP book was Larry Ullman’s Visual QuickPro. Are there any php tech authors who know how to write??
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|Great book except missing one thing.,
I am relatively new to PHP. I just started with this book not too long ago. I had purchased another PHP book previously, but each chapter was very light on it’s subject matter (the chapter on Arrays was only 3 pages). I knew that if I wanted to learn PHP thoroughly and effectively that I had to find a book that educated me more on each topic. That’s where this book does an excellent job, the amount of information covered in each chapter is very thorough and necessary to learn in hopes of becoming a professional. In addition, the book covers a lot of topics that other books don’t that are very interesting and necessary. (for example, chapter 24, Introduction to Zend Framework or chapter 16,Networking)..
But what I found disappointing was that at no point in the book did the author engage it’s reader (meaning there are no practice exercises). I learn best when I can take what I’ve learned and apply it to a working example; where I am asked to create my own code instead of simply copying the code in the book. This book doesn’t do anything like that. There are tons of code examples that you can copy, and that’s just about it.
IMHO this book really seems to be a reference style book. A great book to read and have around, but as a total beginner, I feel like it’s lacking the necessary engagement that will get me thinking for myself.
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