Programming PHP

Amazon.com

PHP is far more than a cult language or open-source icon. It's a remarkably capable language that's well integrated with lots of technologies--notably mSQL and MySQL database servers--and quite easy to learn. Programming PHP helps you up the PHP learning curve, very nearly guaranteeing that you'll find in its pages an example that illustrates every fundamental aspect of the language and its most important extension modules. Plus, there's some cool advanced stuff, like recipes for manipulating images, working with Extensible Markup Language (XML) content, and generating Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files. Rasmus Lerdorf invented PHP and quarterbacks its ongoing evolution, so there's little question of the content's authority.

The authors use a Talmudic style to explore PHP's capabilities and explain them to their readers, meaning that they like to present code and commentary in close formation, with each enhancing the other. Typically, they'll present a capability generically and show the relevant code. Then they'll dig into variations on the theme, calling attention to required code alterations as they go. This is a book about PHP itself, so practically no attention is paid to PHP Builder or other development tools. Regardless, this book will help you solve programming challenges with PHP, and enable you to write efficient, attractive code. --David Wall

Topics covered: The PHP programming language, for people who are coming to PHP with a bit of programming experience in other languages or who want to expand their existing PHP knowledge beyond the basics. Sections deal with the core language, as well as HTTP session management, database connectivity (to MySQL and Oracle, as well as with PHP Extension and Application Repository--PEAR), graphics file manipulation, XML parsing, and PDF creation. There are instructions for building a PHP extension library in C, as well as a function reference and guide to existing extensions.

Book Description

Programming PHP, Second Edition is the authoritative guide to PHP 5 and is filled with the unique knowledge of the creator of PHP (Rasmus Lerdorf) and other PHP experts. When it comes to creating web sites, the PHP scripting language is truly a red-hot property. In fact, PHP is currently used on more than 19 million web sites, surpassing Microsoft's ASP .NET technology in popularity. Programmers love its flexibility and speed; designers love its accessibility and convenience.

As the industry standard book on PHP, all of the essentials are covered in a clear and concise manner. Language syntax and programming techniques are coupled with numerous examples that illustrate both correct usage and common idioms. With style tips and practical programming advice, this book will help you become not just a PHP programmer, but also a good PHP programmer. Programming PHP, Second Edition covers everything you need to know to create effective web applications with PHP. Contents include:

--Detailed information on the basics of the PHP language, including data types, variables, operators, and flow control statements
--Chapters outlining the basics of functions, strings, arrays, and objects
--Coverage of common PHP web application techniques, such as form processing and validation, session tracking, and cookies
--Material on interacting with relational databases, such as MySQL and Oracle, using the database-independent PEAR DB library and the new PDO Library
--Chapters that show you how to generate dynamic images, create PDF files, and parse XML files with PHP
--Advanced topics, such as creating secure scripts, error handling, performance tuning, and writing your own C language extensions to PHP
--A handy quick reference to all the core functions in PHP and all the standard extensions that ship with PHP

Praise for the first edition:

"If you are just getting into the dynamic Web development world or you are considering migrating from another dynamic web product to PHP, Programming PHP is the book of choice to get you up, running and productive in a short time."

--Peter MacIntrye, eWeek

"I think this is a great book for programmers who want to start developing dynamic web sites with PHP. It gives a detailed overview of PHP, lots of valuable tips, and a good sense of PHP's strengths."

--David Dooling, Slashdot.org

Customer Reviews:

nice if you'ree a programer.......2007-10-01

I really liked this book. I'ts easy to understand, and it covers the basics. Just as a warning, this book is focused in people that already have som basic knowledrge of programing and HML.

Excellent book by Rasmus Ledorf.......2007-07-22

I can certainly recommend this one for the upcoming PHP developer. The insight contained within was valuable.

The book is 'OK', but not great.......2007-06-09

I used this book at work, and wasn't impressed.

Now, maybe it's the language itself that lacks consistency and isn't all that interesting, I don't know.
I wasn't as much exceited reading the book as I was when I read, for example, K&R (C), Paul Graham and Peter Seibel (Lisp), Meyers (C++). The book will help you get things done, no doubt, but there doesn't seem to be anything special about it.

Really a great PHP book.......2007-05-05

And I am not saying this lightly. I am writing about 2nd edition. This is a great PHP book, even for a beginner to PHP. I have been programming for years now, and read a bunch of programming books, and this is one of the best books I read so far. It is easy to follow, easy to understand, and it covers everything you need to become a greap PHP programmer.

Outstanding tutorial on PHP along with all of its possibilities.......2007-01-20

Most of the books I've looked at on PHP have tied it in a three-legged race with mySQL. I was looking for something that taught the core language itself and its place in applications besides those in which it is teamed with mySQL. This appears to be that book. The core PHP language is very good at handling strings and arrays and objects. Along with standard and optional extension modules, a PHP application can work with databases like Oracle and MySQL, draw graphs, create PDF files, and parse XML files. You can write your own PHP extension modules in C to provide a PHP interface to the functions in an existing code library. You can also run PHP on Windows and use it to control other Windows applications such as Word and Excel with COM or interact with databases using ODBC. This book is a guide to all of these capabiliies of the PHP language, as well as a tutorial on the core language itself. This book assumes you have a working knowledge of HTML and that you know how to program - preferably in either C, C++, or Perl.

The first six chapters teach the core language itself. The six chapters include a dedicated introduction and a chapter on language basics which acts as a concise guide to PHP program elements such as identifiers, data types, operators, and flow-control statements. The next four chapters after that concern functions, strings, arrays, and objects respectively. The following is an outline of the remaining chapters of the book:

Chapter 7, "Web Techniques" - PHP was designed as a web-scripting language and, although it is possible to use it in purely command-line and GUI scripts, the Web accounts for the vast majority of PHP uses. A dynamic web site may have forms, sessions, and sometimes redirection, and this chapter explains how to implement those things in PHP. You'll learn how PHP provides access to form parameters and uploaded files, how to send cookies and redirect the browser, and how to use PHP sessions.

Chapter 8, "Databases" - PHP has support for over 20 databases, including the most popular commercial and open source varieties. This chapter covers how to access databases from PHP. The focus is on the PEAR DB system, which lets you use the same functions to access any database, rather than on the myriad database-specific extensions. In this chapter, you'll learn how to fetch data from the database, how to store data in the database, and how to handle errors. The chapter finishes with a sample application that shows how to put various database techniques into action.

Chapter 9, Graphics - Many web images are dynamically created, such as graphs of stock performance. PHP supports the creation of such graphics with the GD and Imlib2 extensions. This chapter demonstrates how to generate images dynamically with PHP, using the GD extension.

Chapter 10, PDF - PHP has several libraries for generating PDF documents. This chapter shows how to use the popular fpdf library. The FPDF library is a set of PHP code you include in your scripts with the required function, so it doesn't require any server-side configuration or support, meaning you can use it even without support from your host.

Chapter 11, XML - This chapter shows how to use the XML parser bundled with PHP, as well as how to use the optional XSLT extension to transform XML. Generating XML is also briefly covered here.

Chapter 12, Security - PHP's convenience is a double-edged sword. The very features that let you quickly write programs in PHP can open doors for those who would break into your systems. It's important to understand that PHP itself is neither secure nor insecure. The security of your web applications is entirely determined by the code you write. This chapter gives tips on making that code secure.

Chapter 13, Application Techniques - This chapter demonstrates some techniques you may find useful in your PHP applications, such as code libraries, templating systems, efficient output handling, error handling, and performance tuning.

Chapter 14, Extending PHP - This chapter demonstrates writing C language extensions to PHP. Although most functionality can be written in the PHP language, sometimes you need the extra speed and control you get from the C API. C is the mechanism for creating the thin middle layer between PHP and any third-party C library. For example, to be able to talk to the MySQL database server, PHP needs to implement the MySQL socket protocol. It would be a lot of work to figure out this protocol and talk to MySQL directly using "fsockopen" and "fputs" from a PHP script. Instead, the same goal can be accomplished with a thin layer of functions written in C that translate MySQL's C API, implemented in the libmysqlclient library included in MySQL, into PHP language-level function calls. This thin layer of functions is known as a PHP extension.

Chapter 15, PHP on Windows - The most common reason to use PHP on Windows is to develop web applications on your Windows desktop. What can be confusing at first is the number of various configurations and choices available. There are many variants of the Windows operating system, and many web servers are available for those operating systems. PHP itself can run as either a DLL or a script. This chapter explains how to install, configure, and make the best use of PHP on Windows systems. One approach is taken and followed to its conclusion, although there are a number of different ways to arrive at the same destination. Also explained is how to take advantage of the features unique to the Windows platform, such as connecting to databases with ODBC and controlling Microsoft Office applications through COM.

As you can see this book really provides two functions. It is a very thorough tutorial and reference on the PHP programming language, and it is also a tutorial and showcase of all of the different uses PHP can have. Well commented code and instructions are provided throughout. I highly recommend it to anyone who needs to learn the PHP programming language as well as those that know the basics and want to put the language to work. Just make sure you know HTML and programming - preferably both C and PERL - first.

PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide (2nd Edition) (Visual QuickPro Guide)

Average customer rating:

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
Great chapters on MySQL
Lots of pages, low on advanced content.
Excellent starter
Practical, project-oriented approach

PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide (2nd Edition) (Visual QuickPro Guide)
Larry Ullman
Manufacturer: Peachpit Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0321336577

Book Description

It hasn't taken Web developers long to discover that when it comes to creating dynamic, database-driven Web sites, MySQL and PHP provide a winning open source combination. Add this book to the mix, and there's no limit to the powerful, interactive Web sites that users can create. With step-by-step instructions, complete scripts, and expert tips to guide readers, veteran author and database designer Larry Ullman gets right down to business: After grounding readers with separate discussions of first the scripting language (PHP) and then the database program (MySQL), he goes on to cover security, sessions and cookies, and using additional Web tools, with several sections devoted to creating sample applications. This guide is indispensable for Web designers who want to replace their static sites with something more dynamic. The companion Web site includes source code, support forums, and extra tutorials. In addition to being updated for the most recent releases of MySQL and PHP, this new edition offers 25% new material, including updated examples for improved clarity and comprehension and new installation instructions for PHP, MySQL, and other related technologies.

Customer Reviews:

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!.......2007-10-05

I purchased this book having absolutely zero PHP or MySQL experience. I had just finished reading a book on HTML and CSS (my only coding experience by the way) with the intention of creating a dynamic web site but first needed to learn how to do it.

Larry's book was EXTREMELY HELPFUL in teaching a total beginner such as myself how to read, write and understand PHP and MySQL scripts. Not only are the scripts and exercises in the book easy to learn, they are also incredibly practical and transferable in terms of customizing for use on personal projects. There are all kinds of wonderful scripts that can be reused hundreds of times once they have been written.

By far, one of the greatest things about this book, is that the author, Larry Ullman has an online forum which he moderates and personally answers questions from all the people who have purchased one of his many books.

I have not read any of Larry's other books yet, but I can honestly say that his teaching style in this one is absolutely fantastic and I would highly recommend it to anyone with a desire to learn PHP and MySQL!!!

I give this book 100 stars!!!

Great chapters on MySQL.......2007-08-24

I have had this book lying around the office for about a year, but never opened it because I program with Coldfusion, not php. But recently I have been working with a MySQL database and needed to read up on it. I had already read "Teach yourself MySQL in 10 minutes a day" and found that to be a bit confusing. I don't think it lays enough groundwork. So I thought, what the heck I'll read the chapters on MySQL in this book. They were excellent! The author lays the groundwork and gets you up to speed in just two chapters. The book is worth the price for just the sections on MySQL.

Lots of pages, low on advanced content........2007-08-08

This is a huge book, approximately 665 pages, however it is quite hard to find anything of help in it. It's great if you are going to go through and do all of the examples, I'm sure you would learn something from it, but it's terrible when you want a quick answer, or you really need to know the details on something. I frequently find myself searching the net instead of this book because it is huge and there is no good way to find the answers. Additionally, when you do find the answers it is just a continuation of a previous example and does not explain in depth on how to use the various functions and such.

In conclusion, it's probably just fine if you are a student and want to go page by page and read the book and learn by examples. But it's terrible as a quick reference, and for more advanced users needing in-depth information you should look elsewhere.

Excellent starter.......2007-06-08

We had to hire a programmer to construct a MySql database and construct the PHP code to complete the site project. Time was critical.
After the job was done, however, I had the time to teach myself the basics of MySql, especially, and enough PHP to modify the new code, or at least understand what was done.
I am still going through the book as time permits, but the book is an excellent starter, and gets you through the basics with excellent examples, well-written explanations and plenty of screen prints to show you what you should see onscreen. I really like the MySql section. I would highly recommend this book to anyone anxious to get up to speed on MySql and PHP.

Practical, project-oriented approach.......2007-05-14

This book was an excellent introduction for someone like me, a professional programmer with no web programming experience, to get started. The project being carried through the book was broad enough to cover a diverse set of topics, and the code examples permitted exploration and experimentation. It doesn't cover object-oriented PHP, but that can be picked up later. I don't think the book will serve as a reference later, but it provides a lot of pointers to other reference information, including the web site associated with the book.

Professional Ajax, 2nd Edition (Programmer to Programmer)

Average customer rating:

Not Happy
Very well written. Excellent resource.
powerful handbook
excellent in several respects
Surprisingly easy to read for a programming book

Professional Ajax, 2nd Edition (Programmer to Programmer)
Nicholas C. Zakas , Jeremy McPeak , and Joe Fawcett
Manufacturer: Wrox
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0470109491

Book Description

Professional Ajax 2nd Edition provides a developer-level tutorial of Ajax techniques, patterns, and use cases. The book begins by exploring the roots of Ajax, covering how the evolution of the web and new technologies directly led to the development of Ajax techniques. A detailed discussion of how frames, JavaScript, cookies, XML, and XMLHttp requests (XHR) related to Ajax is included. After this introduction, the book moves on to cover the implementation of specific Ajax techniques. Request brokers such as hidden frames, dynamic iframes, and XHR are compared and contrasted, explaining when one method should be used over another. To make this discussion clearer, a brief overview of HTTP requests and responses is included.

Once a basic understanding of the various request types is discussed, the book moves on to provide in-depth examples of how and when to use Ajax in a web site or web application. Different data transmission formats, including plain text, HTML, XML, and JSON are discussed for their advantages and disadvantages. Also included is a discussion on web services and how they may be used to perform Ajax techniques. Next, more complex topics are covered. A chapter introducing a request management framework explores how to manage all of the requests inside of an Ajax application. Ajax debugging techniques are also discussed.

The last part of the book walks through the creation of two full-fledged Ajax web applications. The first, FooReader.NET, is an Ajax-powered RSS reader. The second, called AjaxMail, is an Ajax-enabled email system. Both of these applications incorporate many of the techniques discussed throughout the book.

Professional Ajax 2nd edition is written for Web application developers looking to enhance the usability of their web sites and web applications and intermediate JavaScript developers looking to further understand the language. Readers should have familiarity with XML, XSLT, Web Services, PHP or C#, HTML, CSS. This book is not aimed at beginners without a basic understanding of the aforementioned technologies. Also, a good understanding of JavaScript is vitally important to understanding this book. Those readers without such knowledge should instead refer to books such as Beginning JavaScript, Second Edition (Wrox, 2004, ISBN: 978-0-7645-5587-9) and Professional JavaScript for Web Developers (Wrox, 2005, ISBN: 978-0-7645-7908-0).

Professional Ajax 2nd edition adds nearly 200 pages of new and expanded coverage compared to the first edition. Some of the new topics covered here include:

Ajax Libraries including the Yahoo! Connection Manager, Prototype, and jQuery
Request Management with Priority Queues and the RequestManager Object
Comet push-based web systems and HTTP streaming
Maps and Mashups with Geocoding, Google Maps API and Yahoo! Maps API
Ajax Debugging with FireBug and Microsoft Fiddler
ASP.NET AJAX Extensions (formerly code-named "Atlas")

And of course the Second Edition retains and updates the core first edition content including:

the range of request brokers (including the hidden frame technique, iframes, and XMLHttp) and explains when one should be used over another
different Ajax techniques and patterns for executing client-server communication
Ajax patterns including predictive fetch, page preloading, submission throttling, incremental field and form validation, periodic refresh, multi-stage download and more
Syndication with RSS, Atom, and XParser
JSON and creating an autosuggest textbox example
web site widgets for a news ticker, weather information, web search, and site search
Ajax Frameworks JSpan, DWR, and Ajax.NET Professional
A Web-based RSS/Atom aggregator case study
An AjaxMail case study

This book is also available as part of the 4-book JavaScript and Ajax Wrox Box (ISBN: 0470227818). This 4-book set includes:

Professional JavaScript for Web Developers (ISBN: 0764579088)
Professional Ajax 2nd edition (ISBN: 0470109491)
Professional Web 2.0 Programming (ISBN: 0470087889)
Professional Rich Internet Applications: Ajax and Beyond (ISBN: 0470082801)

Customer Reviews:

Not Happy.......2007-10-03

Wed 10/03/2007 5:15 pm. I'm not sure who writes these positive reviews, but an early example in the book ("The Hidden Frame Technique", starting on page 21) is obviously broken. The book shows "HiddenFrameExample1.htm" in an illustration but there is no such file in the ProAjax2ePHP.zip file downloaded from wrox. Judging by quotes on the internet probably from the first edition, I'd guess the actual file is probably GetCustomerData.php (?) but whether it is or not, that file has an obvious syntax error, missing paren in line 12 "if (is_numeric($sID) {". Of course if I were a php/ajax expert all this would be blindingly obvious; but I'm not, that's why I bought the book. I can't say I'm optimistic about the remainder of the text.

Very well written. Excellent resource........2007-07-27

I'm a senior ASP.NET/Web developer with no Ajax experience. This is my first Ajax book. I wanted to learn Ajax from the ground up, not just the Microsoft controls. Our ecommerce site is very highly trafficed and there's no forgiveness for inefficiencies. This book certainly fulfilled my expectations, but it also introduced me to some new worlds of concepts that I did not expect. For instance, the chapter on Ajax Patterns: It's a new way of thinking about Web Development. I'm very impressed with its content. The book is clearly written, the examples are excellent. I am learning a great deal from this book. Nice job guys!

powerful handbook.......2007-06-27

I really like this powerful handbook whick gives me detail tutorials in the field of AJAX practice.

excellent in several respects.......2007-03-23

Last year (2006), I plowed through practically every available book on Ajax. This one really stands out for its excellent historical overview of how Ajax grew to exist. It also is one of the few that covers the use of hidden frames and Iframes as an Ajax technique (it has been around longer but is still used widely). The writing is outstanding. If you can only buy one Ajax book, this one should be it.

A free copy of chapter 1, "What is Ajax?" is available online at [...]

Surprisingly easy to read for a programming book.......2007-02-20

The information you need to get started on ajax programming happens very quickly in this book. The way it is presented also helps a great deal. While it still has it's dry parts, this book was actually surprisingly easy to read(meaning I wasn't falling asleep after 5 minutes of reading)

Average customer rating:

More than expected.
Best Regex material I've ever read
VERY VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
Good Information
The ultimate book for the ultimate demands - For an introduction just too heavy weight

Mastering Regular Expressions
Jeffrey Friedl
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0596528124

Amazon.com

Regular expressions are a central element of UNIX utilities like egrep and programming languages such as Perl. But whether you're a UNIX user or not, you can benefit from a better understanding of regular expressions since they work with applications ranging from validating data-entry fields to manipulating information in multimegabyte text files. Mastering Regular Expressions quickly covers the basics of regular-expression syntax, then delves into the mechanics of expression-processing, common pitfalls, performance issues, and implementation-specific differences. Written in an engaging style and sprinkled with solutions to complex real-world problems, Mastering Regular Expressions offers a wealth information that you can put to immediate use.

Book Description

Regular expressions are an extremely powerful tool for manipulating text and data. They are now standard features in a wide range of languages and popular tools, including Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, VB.NET and C# (and any language using the .NET Framework), PHP, and MySQL.

If you don't use regular expressions yet, you will discover in this book a whole new world of mastery over your data. If you already use them, you'll appreciate this book's unprecedented detail and breadth of coverage. If you think you know all you need to know about regular expressions, this book is a stunning eye-opener.

As this book shows, a command of regular expressions is an invaluable skill. Regular expressions allow you to code complex and subtle text processing that you never imagined could be automated. Regular expressions can save you time and aggravation. They can be used to craft elegant solutions to a wide range of problems. Once you've mastered regular expressions, they'll become an invaluable part of your toolkit. You will wonder how you ever got by without them.

Yet despite their wide availability, flexibility, and unparalleled power, regular expressions are frequently underutilized. Yet what is power in the hands of an expert can be fraught with peril for the unwary. Mastering Regular Expressions will help you navigate the minefield to becoming an expert and help you optimize your use of regular expressions.

Mastering Regular Expressions, Third Edition, now includes a full chapter devoted to PHP and its powerful and expressive suite of regular expression functions, in addition to enhanced PHP coverage in the central "core" chapters. Furthermore, this edition has been updated throughout to reflect advances in other languages, including expanded in-depth coverage of Sun's java.util.regex package, which has emerged as the standard Java regex implementation. Topics include:

A comparison of features among different versions of many languages and tools
How the regular expression engine works
Optimization (major savings available here!)
Matching just what you want, but not what you don't want
Sections and chapters on individual languages

Written in the lucid, entertaining tone that makes a complex, dry topic become crystal-clear to programmers, and sprinkled with solutions to complex real-world problems, Mastering Regular Expressions, Third Edition offers a wealth information that you can put to immediate use.

Reviews of this new edition and the second edition:

"There isn't a better (or more useful) book available on regular expressions."
--Zak Greant, Managing Director, eZ Systems

"A real tour-de-force of a book which not only covers the mechanics of regexes in extraordinary detail but also talks about efficiency and the use of regexes in Perl, Java, and .NET...If you use regular expressions as part of your professional work (even if you already have a good book on whatever language you're programming in) I would strongly recommend this book to you."
--Dr. Chris Brown, Linux Format

"The author does an outstanding job leading the reader from regex novice to master. The book is extremely easy to read and chock full of useful and relevant examples...Regular expressions are valuable tools that every developer should have in their toolbox. Mastering Regular Expressions is the definitive guide to the subject, and an outstanding resource that belongs on every programmer's bookshelf. Ten out of Ten Horseshoes."
--Jason Menard, Java Ranch

Customer Reviews:

More than expected........2007-08-24

I have been in computer software developer over 7 years now and never really used regular expression until a year ago. True, you can live without it. But, with regular expression at hand, you climb up another level of programming. Code will be much concise and code research will be like a breeze.

Anyway, I didn't read this book entirely since later chapters explain intricacies and subtle differences of each specific language, e.g., java, perl, php, etc. It didn't take long to apply the knowledge I gained to real work and benefit. By the time I completed the first chapter, I already started to get rewards. My life is a lot easier now.

Even with only the first 3 chapters, this book is well worth its price. The author did superb job explaining what's going on behind the scene and guide you through the right way of constructing regular expressions for various situations. Of course, he will show you common pitfalls to avoid, too. Very detailed and comprehensive.

Highly recommended.

Best Regex material I've ever read.......2007-08-16

Before reading this book, I would have considered myself an intermediate regexer. After the first 2 chapters, I realized how novice I really was. Having only made it through 5 chapters of this book, I can't say enough about it. The detail and step-by-step analysis that Mr. Friedl takes to describe the regex matching process is the best I've ever seen. It's little things that make the analysis easy to follow -- like the brackets he uses to mark the regex, and the small triangle cursor to show where the engine is in the matching process. I continue to look forward to each new chapter. Thank you for a wonderful work of art.

VERY VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!.......2007-05-23

Are you a programmer working on text-related tasks? If you are, then this book is for you. Author Jeffrey Friedl, has done an outstanding job of writing a cool book that will interest anyone who has an opportunity to use regular expressions.

Friedl, begin with an introduction to the concept of regular expressions. Then, the author takes a look at text processing with regular expressions. Next, the author provides an overview of features and utilities, plus a bit of history. He also explains the details of how regular expressions work. The author continues by working through regular expressions examples. Then, he discusses efficiency in detail. Next, the author covers Perl regular expressions in detail. He then looks at Sun's java.util.regex package. The author continues by looking at .NET's language-neutral regular-expression package. Finally, the author looks at PHP's preg suite of regex functions.

This most excellent book should expand your understanding, even if you consider yourself an accomplished regular-expression expert. Perhaps more importantly, the book concentrates on mastering a particular implementation!

Good Information.......2007-05-07

Many people only barely utilize regular experssions, having been unable to get more than basic expressions to work. There are a lot of reasons for this - shell escapes, man pages that are terse to the point of being cryptic, etc. This book is a clear and very readable trip through practical regular expression creation and application that will enable the reader to get the most out of grep, awk, perl and other programs that use regular expressions.

The ultimate book for the ultimate demands - For an introduction just too heavy weight.......2007-05-03

Jeffrey Friedl describes regular expressions at an amazing depth and precision. Regular expressions are not easy and the quirks of the different tools (including their exact version and for what operating system) make writing them to an irritating black art. A black art to almost anybody. MRE sorts everything out in a comprehensible fashion. The price the reader has to pay: a very dense book, a need to follow the details until your head starts swimming and a lot of strain on the memory about what works, how and where.

MRE is somewhat easier to comprehend for a reader with a strong Pearl background. Also a good prior understanding to regular expressions is a true asset here. If you have neither, you do not need to despair. Jeffrey Friedl explains everything thoroughly from the ground up.

The writing style is very pedagogical. Important things get repeated quite often. Still this book is very dense. The flow is dry: no rhythm, special sense of humor or wit sweetens your wading through the material. Nevertheless Jeffrey Friedl kept my interest through the pages though the reading felt like hard work.

I do recommend this book to the truly dedicated reader.

Average customer rating:

a Must have for any Drupal Developer
Good in depth resource, not an intro and as such just great.
Very Good
Excellent Book!
Pro Drupal Development in my bag

Pro Drupal Development
John K. VanDyk , and Matt Westgate
Manufacturer: Apress
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Accessories:

ASIN: 1590597559

Book Description

Drupal is one of the most popular content management systems in use today. With it, you can create a variety of community-driven sites, including blogs, forums, wiki-style sites, and much more. Pro Drupal Development was written to arm you with knowledge to customize your Drupal installation however you see fit. The book assumes that you already possess the knowledge to install and bring a standard installation online. Then authors John VanDyk and Matt Westgate delve into Drupal internals, showing you how to truly take advantage of its powerful architecture.

You'll learn how to create your own modules, develop your own themes, and produce your own filters. You'll learn the inner workings of each key part of Drupal, including user management, sessions, the node system, caching, and the various APIs available to you. Of course, your Drupal-powered site isn't effective until you can efficiently serve pages to your visitors. As such, the authors have included the information you need to optimize your Drupal installation to perform well under high-load situations. Also featured is information on Drupal security and best practices, as well as integration of Ajax and the internationalization of your Drupal web site. Simply put, if you are working with Drupal at all, then you need this book.

This book is written by Drupal core developers.
Drupal architecture and behavior are mapped out visually.
Common pitfalls are identified and addressed.
Chapters provide regular discussion and reference to why things work they way they do, not just how.
The front matter features a foreword by Dries Buytaert, Drupal founder.

Customer Reviews:

a Must have for any Drupal Developer.......2007-10-04

This book is a must have for any drupal developer. My copy is already dog-eared from repeated use.

Good in depth resource, not an intro and as such just great........2007-09-24

This is a great book by some super knowledgeble Drupal Developers. It is not a starter book for learning Drupal. However it you prefer a steep learning curve to start with, and get moving at some deeper levels, this book is great.

I worry about the fluidity of any resource on a dynamic software project such as Drupal, but currently this book is serving me wonderfully.

Very Good.......2007-09-16

Very good book for developers. Cleared alot of unknowns for our team. A must-have book for anyone seriously into Drupal development. Looking forward for new editions that wuld over more contrib modules such as Views, Imagecache, and the like.

Excellent Book!.......2007-09-13

Great book for newbies and professional developers! It gave me a pretty good jump start in Drupal development. Covers pretty much everything you need to know about the platform. Easy to read, has charts and useful examples. IMHO if you're seriously thinking to use Drupal for your next project - you have to buy this book.

Pro Drupal Development in my bag.......2007-09-06

As a Drupal developer it was a no brainer to purchase "Pro Drupal Development" by J. VanDyk and M. Westgate. I devour anything Drupal and this promised to be the first book on Drupal for developers. But I was not prepared to make a permanent space for it in my bag. I am often on the go, meeting clients and other programmers in the local coffee shops. Since receiving my copy four months ago I have not been more than a few feet from it at all times. I was not finished the second chapter, "Writing a module", before it sent me back to my computer to try all the new things I had learned through its great examples.

My favorite chapter is chapter 8 "The Theme System". This chapter walks you through converting an html/css design into a full functioning Drupal theme. It was simply explained and I was able to convert a design in just a few hours. I consider that pretty good for my first try. Check it out for yourself, Apress the publisher is offering chapter 8 as a teaser (http://www.apress.com/book/downloadfile/3519).

This book is not for the beginner. It jumps right into the meat of the matter but thats what I appreciate most. A solid reference for the advanced Drupal developer.

When my computer is not on, it sets quietly in my bag snuggled up against my copy of "Pro Drupal Development". If only my computer could digest the book and do some programming for me then I could get back to all those video games that need my attention.

Beginning PHP and MySQL 5: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition

Average customer rating:

Definitely not for begginers
Far too many typos, syntax errors, and gaps in explinations
Full of value
Great reference for all
Great starter guide

Beginning PHP and MySQL 5: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition
W. Jason Gilmore
Manufacturer: Apress
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1590595521

Book Description

Written for the budding web developer searching for a powerful, low-cost solution for building flexible, dynamic web sites.
Essentially three books in one: provides thorough introductions to the PHP language and the MySQL database, and shows you how these two technologies can be effectively integrated to build powerful websites.
Provides over 500 code examples, including real-world tasks such as creating an auto-login feature, sending HTML-formatted e-mail, testing password guessability, and uploading files via a web interface.
Updated for MySQL 5, includes new chapters introducing triggers, stored procedures, and views.

From the Back Cover

Interested in becoming a master of the PHP language and MySQL database but don't know where to begin? This best-selling book ranks among the most thorough and practical guides in print, covering all of the key concepts and features, and showing you how to effectively integrate PHP and MySQL to build powerful web sites.

The book begins with a vast overview of PHP's capabilities, starting with a survey of the installation and configuration process on both the Windows and Linux platforms. Next, several chapters are devoted to basic PHP concepts, including variables, datatypes, arrays, functions, string manipulation, and processing user input. Other key PHP topics are also covered, including PEAR, session handling, LDAP integration, the Smarty templating engine, Web services, and PDO.

Next up is a presentation of MySQL's key features. You're first guided through MySQL's installation and configuration process, and are presented with an introduction to its storage engines, datatypes, administration utilities, security features, and data import/export facilities. New MySQL 5--specific chapters have been added in this edition, covering triggers, stored procedures, and views. Along the way, you'll gain insight into PHP's assortment of MySQL functions (using both the mysql and mysqli extensions), and learn how to create and execute queries, perform searches, and carry out key database tasks from within your Web application.

What You Will Learn from This Book

Install and configure Apache, PHP, and MySQL on both Windows and Linux.
Accept and process information submitted via HTML forms.
Authenticate users and track user preferences and data using PHP's session-handling capabilities.
Process web-based file uploads using the HTTP_Upload PEAR package.
Create your own RSS aggregator using Magpie, and process XML files in amazingly efficient fashion using SimpleXML.
Use both command-line and graphical MySQL clients to effectively manage your data.
Secure the MySQL server, creating roles and restricting access even at very granular levels.
Effectively integrate PHP and MySQL to create dynamic, data-driven web applications.

Download Description

Beginning PHP 5 and MYSQL: From Novice to Professional offers a comprehensive introduction to two of the most popular Web application building technologies on the planet: the scripting language PHP and the MySQL database server. This book will not only expose you to the core aspects of both technologies, but will provide valuable insight into how they are used in unison to create dynamic data-driven Web applications.

Beginning PHP 5 and MYSQL explains the new features of the latest releases of the world's most popular Open Source Web development technologies: MySQL 4 database server and PHP 5 scripting language. This book explores the benefits, extensive new features, and advantages of the object-oriented PHP 5, and how it can be used in conjunction with MySQL 4 to create powerful dynamic Web sites.

This is the perfect book for the Web designer, programmer, hobbyist, or novice that wants to learn how to create applications with PHP 5 and MySQL 4, and is a great entrance point for Apress's extensive spectrum of PHP books planned for 2004.

Customer Reviews:

Definitely not for begginers.......2007-10-02

I never got around to finishing this book because halfway through it I noticed I had not even written a single line of code.The author does not propose any excercises for you to try out what your learned through the book.All he does is list all the functions available in PHP but no examples on how to use them.
I can see this book being useful as a reference after you have programmed PHP for a while, but for beginners that want to get started in PHP for the very firt time I would not recommend it.

Far too many typos, syntax errors, and gaps in explinations.......2007-09-15

I bought this book on recommendation. I have a background in programming, and I just needed a book to cement together all the concepts I had picked up in developing PHP apps. Less then 2 chapters in the errors became so frequent in the code that the author no longer holds my confidence. Its hard to be confident of his explanation if it lacks the care to make sure its correct.

The writing and explanations, though following a clear format, are at times wildly inconstant in explaining the parts of various functions. Do not recommend.

Full of value.......2007-08-07

I haven't programmed in almost 10 years, but wanted to jump into PHP and MySQL generated web content. I was able to pick and chose throughout this book to bring myself up to speed and have a functional website in a matter of 2 weeks. I was easily able to adapt examples in the book to fit my needs.

This book was really worth the money. I will be referencing to it for a long time to come.

Great reference for all.......2007-07-06

I am a semi-experienced programmer, majoring in CS and currently in my third year. I needed to buy a book to learn PHP for a job and originally went for O'Reilley's _Learning PHP and MySQL_. I quickly realized that was a bad choice, however, because it was way too simple and short and didn't really cover SQL at all. Even as a reference book it just did not suffice compared to Gilmore's _PHP5 and MySQL_ which I borrowed from a friend. PHP and MySQL is covered in great depth, and a thorough index makes this nearly-exhaustive text a great reference book.

**This is likely not a book for someone who has never programmed before** as it uses typical programming language terminology without previous definition. Still, abundant examples and side notes allows anyone with reasonable programming experience to breeze through the book. Reading this cover-to-cover would definitely not be the correct approach, but skimming over the chapters and getting acquainted with the PHP language is something this book makes easy to do when you can simply slow down and go over the examples when you feel you need to, or quickly reach the next section thanks to good organization and text formatting.

If you are looking for a reference book for PHP and MySQL just short of a bible, this is definitely for you. But if you are a complete novice to programming, you would probably be better off coming back to this later or buying it on the side for once you have more experience.

Great starter guide.......2007-06-22

this guide speaks in laymens terms and teached using simple examples. I would recomend this book for grandmothers and professional web admins collections

Web Database Applications with PHP & MySQL, 2nd Edition

Average customer rating:

MySQl-PHP textbook
I really like this book
Fairly Useful
Buy this book
Disappointingly poor index

Web Database Applications with PHP & MySQL, 2nd Edition
Hugh E. Williams
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0596005431

Amazon.com

PHP and MySQL go hand in hand; the former has been carefully adapted, through the efforts of the open-source community, to the latter. For situations that require dynamic content but don't merit the complexity and development time of Java or .NET enterprise applications, the PHP language and the MySQL database server fit the bill perfectly. That's the point Hugh Williams and David Lane make in Web Database Applications with PHP & MySQL, which combines language tutorials with application design advice to yield a comprehensive picture of its subjects at a reasonable price. Williams and Lane--both Australian academics who use an online wine store in many of their examples--deserve tremendous kudos for their way of presenting recommended coding strategies. Though the code listings themselves aren't remarkably well commented, the authors do a commendable job of explaining in prose what the code is up to.

Case in point: The ever-essential task of using PHP to open a connection to a MySQL database, submit a query to that database, receive a response, and format the returned rows, if any. The book addresses this problem with a straight code listing, followed by text that explains what's happening in five numbered steps. Similar care goes to the other popular applications of the PHP/MySQL duo: session management, shopping carts, and authentication of users. --David Wall

Topics covered: How to use the PHP server-side scripting language and the MySQL database engine to underlie dynamic Web sites (those that rely on database queries) and full-on Web applications, such as those that require session management and maintenance of user rosters. Tutorials in both subjects begin with the basics and proceed through moderately complicated stuff, though there's no absolutely comprehensive reference here.

Book Description

There are many reasons for serving up dynamic content from a web site: to offer an online shopping site, create customized information pages for users, or just manage a large volume of content through a database. Anyone with a modest knowledge of HTML and web site management can learn to create dynamic content through the PHP programming language and the MySQL database. This book gives you the background and tools to do the job safely and reliably. Web Database Applications with PHP and MySQL, Second Edition thoroughly reflects the needs of real-world applications. It goes into detail on such practical issues as validating input (do you know what a proper credit card number looks like?), logging in users, and using templates to give your dynamic web pages a standard look. But this book goes even further. It shows how JavaScript and PHP can be used in tandem to make a user's experience faster and more pleasant. It shows the correct way to handle errors in user input so that a site looks professional. It introduces the vast collection of powerful tools available in the PEAR repository and shows how to use some of the most popular tools. Even while it serves as an introduction to new programmers, the book does not omit critical tasks that web sites require. For instance, every site that allows updates must handle the possibility of multiple users accessing data at the same time. This book explains how to solve the problem in detail with locking. Through a sophisticated sample application--Hugh and Dave's Wine Store--all the important techniques of dynamic content are introduced. Good design is emphasized, such as dividing logic from presentation. The book introduces PHP 5 and MySQL 4.1 features, while providing techniques that can be used on older versions of the software that are still in widespread use. This new edition has been redesigned around the rich offerings of PEAR. Several of these, including the Template package and the database-independent query API, are fully integrated into examples and thoroughly described in the text. Topics include:

Installation and configuration of Apache, MySQL, and PHP on Unix®, Windows®, and Mac OS® X systems
Introductions to PHP, SQL, and MySQL administration
Session management, including the use of a custom database for improved efficiency
User input validation, security, and authentication
The PEAR repository, plus details on the use of PEAR DB and Template classes
Production of PDF reports

Customer Reviews:

MySQl-PHP textbook.......2007-02-19

As usual in text books, there is a lot of useless information that is not necessary, but since writers are paid by the word, this is to be expected.

I wish there was a section on MySQL commands.

I really like this book.......2006-11-18

I really like this book--direct, no-nonsense, and intelligently written with a minimum of jokes.

One thing that seems strange, that I'm hoping someone can clarify:

In the section of chapter 8 dealing with transactions and concurrency, there is no mention of setting transaction isolation levels (SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL command in MySQL). Instead, concurrency is achieved solely by setting table locks.

I can sort of understand this in that the authors are using MyISAM tables. But why no mention of transaction isolation levels using INNODB tables, given that this is the more standard way of dealing with concurrency issues?

Fairly Useful.......2006-11-06

The book got me off the ground with my first client application, a rudimentary database maintenance system. Most valuable were the techniques and thorough understanding required to build a satisfactory security component.

However, it falls way short as a reference tool and could have included a more comprehensive list of mysql functions.

Buy this book.......2006-10-26

If your having trouble deciding on a book for your php & mysql development buy this book. It covers all major aspects of php and mysql web development and then some. You will find something useful on every page of this book, and theres a good amount of book here.

Disappointingly poor index.......2006-06-28

I'm new to PHP and MySQL, but a programmer for over 3 decades. I'm customizing some PHP code, using code examples for ideas. When I (a) see something I want to understand better or (b) want to find the PHP analog for basic functions, I naturally turn to the index to try to find the information I need. However, I found the index very disappointing because of what it doesn't have. For example, simple and basic keywords are not in the index: "comment", "logical operator", "and", "or", etc. I'm going to have order a different book as a PHP reference.

AJAX and PHP: Building Responsive Web Applications

Average customer rating:

Not best practices, not cross browser, not teaching
Practical Advice
Great layout and easy to undertand for noobs and pros!
I wish there was more on the capabilities of PHP.
Informative

AJAX and PHP: Building Responsive Web Applications
Cristian Darie , Bogdan Brinzarea , Filip Chereches-Tosa , and Mihai Bucica
Manufacturer: Packt Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1904811825

Book Description

Building Responsive Web Applications with AJAX and PHP is the most practical and efficient resource a reader can get to enter the exciting world of AJAX. This book will teach you how to create faster, lighter, better web applications by using the AJAX ingredients technologies to their full potential. Assuming a basic knowledge of PHP, XML, JavaScript and MySQL, this book will help you understand how the heart of AJAX beats and how the constituent technologies work together. After teaching the foundations, the book will walk you through eight real-world case studies covering tasks you’ll be likely to need for your own applications: - AJAX enabled form-validation page - Online chat room - Customized type-ahead text entry solution, that helps users find the help page for the PHP functions - A simple cards game that supports multiple simultaneous sessions - Whiteboard where online users can draw online - Database-enabled, editable and customizable data grid - RSS aggregator application - Use the script.aculo.us JavaScript toolkit to build a drag&drop enabled sortable list The appendixes guide you through installing your working environment, using powerful tools that enable debugging, improving, and profiling your code, working with XSLT and XPath, and working with existing AJAX frameworks.

Customer Reviews:

Not best practices, not cross browser, not teaching.......2007-08-15

The book would be ok as a reference or code examples with brief explanations. However, the code practices used, when compared to other current books left me very disappointed.

The Good:
- Good examples, all code is documented
- Different projects - code provided online
- The end results are good. (for Windows)

The Bad:
- Coding. They practice what I'd call "potluck programming". Basically you get 1 php page with inline calls to JavaScript, PHP, HTML and even some CSS properties. Maybe some programmers like this approach, but personally, I've been moving away from it, keeping your HTML alone, and inline JavaScript calls non-existent. The whole programming is basically obstrusive, taking over the file. Just bad programming practices. This is the biggest gripe I have with this book. Any current book should be teaching the more modern and less obstrusive ways of programming.
- MAC support. A lot of the applications simply do not work, or work with lots of quirks under Safari and OS X. I know the market share is just around 5%, but it makes some of the applications worthless for those people.
- There is not much in the way of teaching, I wanted to learn a bit more. The book has a lot of code, but the explanation section seems very lacking. (10 pages of code, followed by a "what just happened" section with less than 10 pages of code (there is less explanation than code, even though a lot of the code is repeated in that section.)

Overall, I was expecting a lot more from this book. I use both PHP and starting to use Ajax, and was hoping this would help, but I would not recommend this book to anybody. There are better books that talk about both Ajax and PHP without having PHP in the title. Professional Ajax is one example and presents the code in different files (though it ocassional reverts back to inline JS).

If you want a book of examples, but don't care much about your coding style, you could very well enjoy the book. If you are striving to become a better programmer, and use unobstrusive practices, stay away from this book, as you will be thoroughly disappointed. Also stay away if you use a OS X for most of your work.

I would title the book: "Code for responsive web applications using AJAX and PHP".
You will not learn how to build those applications, but they will be kind enough to provide you with their code.

Practical Advice.......2007-08-09

Enjoyed this book. The authors clearly understand their subject and provide useful workable code that can be used as a basis for your own projects.

Great layout and easy to undertand for noobs and pros!.......2007-08-06

This is my second AJAX/PHP book and I must say this one is excellent. The author gives the reader not only great examples, but then reexamines the code to let the reader how and why each block is needed and what purpose it serves.

This is my first read from the publisher, Packt, but if the other books are laid out like this I'll give them a go.

So should you buy it? I would say you definitely need a basic understanding of PHP and an Intermediate understanding of JavaScript to get through this book with a smile.

Highly recommended.

I wish there was more on the capabilities of PHP........2007-07-06

First off I'm fairly new to web programming (Javascript and PHP) but I didn't find much to broaden my knowledge with this book. Ajax Javascript is covered extremely well elsewhere ("Pragmatic Ajax", "Ajax in Action" and "Ajax Design Patterns" for instance) and is PHP programming ("PHP and MySQL Web Development" and "Advanced PHP Programming").
The book is not complete enough to serve as an introduction to Javascript or PHP. It really doesn't seem to cover the issues with distributed asynchronous programming either.
There is a huge need for a book that concentrates on building solid asynchronous servers with PHP. For instance how can state be carried from server call to server call (PHP session management?). What happens if multiple XML requests are sent while a PHP script is running? Can a single instance handle multiple requests without restarting from the beginning? How can a long running PHP program (yes you need to change the server time out) handle streams of data to and from Javascript?
My suggestions for the next edition are:
1) More on server side patterns (PHP) for AJAX
2) Session management
3) remote RPC techniques
4) JSON servers (techniques like phpolait?)
5) Talk through the code examples more.
I found the code in the book to be the hardest to read through and at the same time the most boring of any programming book I've ever read.

Informative.......2007-05-22

This is a great book that discusses the frameworks and relations that PHP and AJAX use to provide dynamic applications. This book goes through the various methods to get the client side to talk with the server with out page refreshes and the tools that speed up the development process. This book has a lot of code examples of working projects that can be used in your own development projects.

Average customer rating:

Top-notch tome
Excellent
Basic libraries coverage with a good example application.

Prototype and Scriptaculous in Action
Dave Crane , Bear Bibeault , and Tom Locke
Manufacturer: Manning Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1933988037

Book Description

Prototype and Scriptaculous are libraries that extend standard Ajax. They make it easier to program Ajax and provide powerful features like drag and drop and animation. In this book, developers learn by playing and see how the libraries work in the real world.

As experience with Ajax increases, developers want the standard Ajax capabilities they repeatedly use to be preprogrammed for them--and that's exactly what Ajax libraries do for them. They reduce the pain of handling cross-browser inconsistencies, they add useful language features, and provide sophisticated functionality. Of these, Prototype is the most popular JavaScript and Ajax framework for low-level user interface features such as animation, drag and drop, and pre-built widgets. Together, they free the developer up to concentrate on building the application. They make a rich user experience easy to achieve.

This book guides the reader through the Prototype and Scriptaculous libraries feature-by-feature. In just 350 pages, readers will find over 100 small working examples to help them explore the libraries. As well, they will develop a web-based image gallery that teacher them how to use Prototype and Scriptaculous in the real-world.

Customer Reviews:

Top-notch tome.......2007-06-25

Javascript has exploded onto the web development scene in the last few years, and powers much of the web 2.0 and Ajax revolution. Every web developer now needs to know how to do common Ajax tasks. Thankfully, Prototype and Scriptaculous In Action makes it both easy and enjoyable.

This is a comprehensive book. The size (510 pages) was initially intimidating, but Prototype and Scriptaculous In Action is exceedingly well written and a genuine pleasure to read. The thorough and thoughtful organization of the book provides some real structure to the discussion, making complex subjects easily digestible. This is the defacto bible of Prototype and Scriptaculous, and these days I turn to this book more than anything else on my shelf.

The book is divided up into four multi-chapter parts, any of which could stand on it's own as a definitive guide. The chapters are full of useful examples, and there's strong emphasis given to migrating existing sites to Prototype and Scriptaculous, which is a major plus. You could turn to any section of the book and immediately see how to inject some new behavior into your existing application, but if you take the time to read from cover-to-cover you'll be rewarded with some deep understanding of both the libraries and Javascript itself.

I'll summarize the four parts of the book:

Part 1, Getting Started, introduces the Prototype and Scriptaculous libraries, focusing heavily on Prototype and Ajax. There's a lot of information on re-designing an existing site for Ajax. Two full chapters are devoted to Prototype's Ajax features. You can get up and running VERY quickly after glancing through these chapters. There's also a lot of depth, and consideration is given to the pervasive effects Ajax has on architectural issues and the new ways that an application will have to manage HTTP traffic.

Part 2, Scriptaculous Quickly, covers effects, controls and drag-n-drop. This is hands-down the best Scriptaculous documentation currently available, anywhere. The core effects are explored and tweaked, and there's lot of very practical examples demonstrating some of the niftiest stuff, like running effects in parallel versus sequentially. And the drag-and-drop coverage is incredibly clear, making it easy, almost trivial, to implement. The Scriptaculous coverage is indispensable, and you'll return to it again and again if you implement Scriptaculous-enabled pages.

Part 3, Prototype in Depth, explores Prototype's Javascript-oriented features. There's a fantastic chapter on functions contexts, and the discussion of closures is one of the best I've seen. There's a lot of information about Javascript fundamentals, and how Prototype can be used to implement inheritance, address arrays, and manipulate the DOM in the browser.

And finally, Part 4 Advanced Topics, has two unrelated chapters. The first chapter overhauls an example app, giving it a Prototype and Scriptaculous makeover. The last chapter is about integration with Ruby on Rails. Prototype was initially written as the Ajax interface to Rails, so there's some strong integration.

As a long-time enterprise web developer, dealing with Javascript has always been a chore. But now I actually (gasp) look forward to tasks that involve Javascript. I'm a convert, and I have Prototype and Scriptaculous in Action to thank.

Excellent.......2007-05-22

I wrote a longer review that Amazon has apparently lost. Oh well. This is an excellent book, very well written. The authors are the rarest kind of technical author: they can actually construct prose that is pleasant to read, not deadly boring, but which works well as a reference book later. The book's organized thoughtfully--it's certainly much more than just an API reference. There's also quite a lot of general advanced Javascript information here, too.

There's at least one other book on these libraries in production from Pragmatic Programmers. If you're considering that, I strongly suggest downloading the sample chapters of both books and comparing. The Crane book is much more appealing to me (not to mention it's available now, not in six months).

Basic libraries coverage with a good example application........2007-04-19

This book lacked detailed coverage of the programming techniques and advanced topics of prototype and scriptaculous. The authors covered the basics by discussing only the API's of the libraries (more attention was given to scriptaculous API's, even though its usage is obvious and prototype API's are more extensive). With 500 pages and the libraries as the title, I expected details about the inner workings of the API's and discussions about its usages/ applications. Instead, 150 pages were devoted to verbose repetitive coverage of scriptaculous' API, which could easily have fitted into 50 pages at most. ALL of the info on scriptaculous could easily have been read online at its wiki site - the book provided no further insight (ch. 5 is especially useless)! Prototype's coverage was decent, but lacked details on several parts of its API. Although prototype and scriptaculous are tightly integrated with Rails, there was only 1 chapter devoted to its discussion, which served more like an overview than a usage guide. Based on content on the libraries alone, I would give this book 3 stars. However, if you're in need of an example application, then it may deserve 4 stars. This book provides a good example of applying prototype's ajax and scriptaculous web 2.0 techniques to a photo gallery website. It shows the advantages these libraries have over plain javascript and dhtml. The extra 100 pages wasted on scriptaculous would better serve Rails' RJS templates or a more complete/ thorough discussion of prototype. Of course it can be argued that the book is not titled, "Prototype, Scriptaculous, and Rails in Action," but it should be.

PHP and MySQL Web Development (3rd Edition) (Developer's Library)

Average customer rating:

Book Order
Over-rated, over-rated, over-rated
Great Book!!
Outstanding
Good comprehensive review

PHP and MySQL Web Development (3rd Edition) (Developer's Library)
Luke Welling , and Laura Thomson
Manufacturer: Sams
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0672326728

Amazon.com

The PHP server-side scripting language and the MySQL database management system (DBMS) make a potent pair. Both are open-source products--free of charge for most purposes--remarkably strong, and capable of handling all but the most enormous transaction loads. Both are supported by large, skilled, and enthusiastic communities of architects, programmers, and designers. PHP and MySQL Web Development introduces readers (who are assumed to have little or no experience with the title subjects) to PHP and MySQL for the purpose of creating dynamic Internet sites. It teaches the same skills as introductory Active Server Pages (ASP) and ColdFusion books--technologies that address the same niche.

Authors Luke Welling and Laura Thomson's technique aims to get readers going on their own projects as soon as possible. They present easily digestible sections on specific technical processes--"Accessing array contents" and "Using encryption with PHP" are two examples. Each section centers on a sample program that strips the task at hand down to its essentials, enabling the reader to fit the process into his or her own solutions as required. Tables that list options and other nuggets of reference material appear as well, but the many examples and the authors' commentary on them take center stage.

For reference material on MySQL, have a look at Paul DuBois's MySQL. On the PHP side, Web Application Development with PHP 4.0 is excellent. --David Wall

Topics covered:

The MySQL database server (for both Unix and Windows)
Accessing MySQL databases through PHP scripting (the letters don't really stand for anything)
Database creation and modification
PHP tricks in order of increasing complexity--everything from basic SQL queries to secure transactions for commerce
Authentication
Network connectivity
Session management
Content customization

Book Description

We've taken the best and made it even better. The third edition of the best-selling PHP and MySQL Web Development has been updated to include material and code on MySQL 5, PHP 5 and on PHPs object model and validation. Through a clear, practical approach, you will learn to develop secure, dynamic websites by integrating and implementing the PHP scripting language and the MySQL database system. Real-world examples and working sample projects will give you a strong foundation on which to start building your own websites, complete with features such as SSL, shopping carts and payment systems. The accompanying CD includes the source code from each example in the book, the entire book in PDF format, and source code and binaries for PHP 5, MySQL 5 and Apache. Readers have called PHP and MySQL Web Development call it the best technical book they've ever read, but don't take their word for it. Find out for yourself!

Customer Reviews:

Book Order.......2007-09-21

This book was ordered for an evening class at a local college. I was able to easily locate the book using the ISBN and placed the order, which included free shipping. The book arrived on schedule and in excellent condition. I definitely would order through Amazon.com again. Thanks