Rating: 
Summary: Thorough and practical, and improved
Review: I looked at a lot of PHP books and selected Luke & Laura's (in its first edition) because it had a pretty comprehensive but fast-paced introduction to the language and then went on to show several practical applications. Some other books just duplicate the php.net function reference, or walk you through the tiresome details of a single project, but this book gets you working in the language and then gives the key elements of several practical projects that are typical for PHP programmers: shopping cart, content management, mailing list, discussion forum, etc.The authors wrote that they aimed their book at readers who have some HTML and some programming experience, but not necessarily any web-programming experience. That put me in their target market, and I found the book an excellent fit. I looked over the second edition today, and it is a significant improvement. The code is now current with PHP 4.3, and while the authors try to use techniques that don't require the latest PHP version, the code is more compatible now with the latest version (e.g. register_globals is not assumed to be set On). Other tweaks in the code listings, e.g. "if (isset($myvar))" instead of "if ($myvar)", show the code has been polished. The typeface is improved too; there seems to be more text on each page but it's actually more legible. I looked up a practical problem today, how to log-in and keep session-state variables for database-authenticated users. Lots of articles on the web, and even some PHP books, offer home-grown solutions that could be translations of 1997 Perl code, but Luke & Laura give a simple and elegant method (in chap. 20) that exploits PHP's latest built-in capabilities and is easy for me to extend. They extend it, too, in their example apps later in the book. PHP is popular because it's a cheap, easy, and full-featured language for web programming. This book has the thorough and practical approach that will have you quickly building commercially useful PHP applications.
Rating:
Summary: notepad's review
Review: This new edition of the book is every bit as good as the previous and more, it will get you up to date with the latest PHP standards while following along with a wide variety of "projects you can actually use." Just as before, this book covers practically everything PHP: commonly used functions, regular expressions, object orientation, database design & integration, security, sessions, e-commerce, project management, useful libraries (image manipulation, pdf files) etc etc.. The code examples include a shopping cart, web forums, content management, e-mail related services, creating a site with membership, and it doesn't stop there - the book is just cram-packed full of information. Any serious PHP web developer should own this book, it opens you up to whole new world of development by relating concepts of software engineering (believe it or not) - in simplified explanations. So what's new? The PHP code and descriptions have been updated, the variety of web resources has grown, the most noticable change of all is the addition of a new chapter which touches base with XML and SOAP. It's very hard to find good PHP books these days (at least where I've been looking) and this is one of em, no complaints :-)
Rating:
Summary: Simply my bible for PHP and MySQL!
Review: A job well done by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson! I purchased this job after going through Amazon User Reviews. I had some knowledge in Perl-CGI and worked on ODBC connectivity to databases. I just wanted to get started with PHP and since this book addressed the added issue of database connectivity (in this case MySQL), I thought of giving it a try. Some of the best features of this book include:
* Manual Installation of the PHP Engine, installation of MySQL Engine on Windows Platform. It also deals with UNIX platform.
* Crispy introduction to setting up database, tables in MySQL.
* All you need to know about Sessions, Shopping Cart etc. The authors also try to discuss the newer functions in the current versions of PHP(at the time of writing the book) and point out the deprecated functions at right places in the book. If you have some knowledge of Server side Scripting and how the Server folder setup is.. then definitely go for this book. Hats Off to the authors on such a wonderful effort. No where in the book i feel the authors digress from the subject. All the subjects handled, are of definite practical interest. Thank you.
Rating:
Summary: notepad's review
Review: This new edition of the book is every bit as good as the previous and more, it will get you up to date with the latest PHP standards while following along with a wide variety of "projects you can actually use." Just as before, this book covers practically everything PHP: commonly used functions, regular expressions, object orientation, database design & integration, security, sessions, e-commerce, project management, useful libraries (image manipulation, pdf files) etc etc.. The code examples include a shopping cart, web forums, content management, e-mail related services, creating a site with membership, and it doesn't stop there - the book is just cram-packed full of information. Any serious PHP web developer should own this book, it opens you up to whole new world of development by relating concepts of software engineering (believe it or not) - in simplified explanations. So what's new? The PHP code and descriptions have been updated, the variety of web resources has grown, the most noticable change of all is the addition of a new chapter which touches base with XML and SOAP. It's very hard to find good PHP books these days (at least where I've been looking) and this is one of em, no complaints :-)
Rating: 
Summary: 2nd Edition rocks!
Review: This book is so cool! As a beginner in PHP I leaned a lot in this book. The price is reasonable. I wish all books are like this "by example type", like the PHP book by Julie Melonie that book also rocks!.
Rating: 
Summary: Fine overview, not the best code
Review: Overall this is a fine, if physically weighty, introduction to PHP. It will take a developer who understands web application flow reasonably well from knowing nothing about PHP to understanding how to build complex web sites. The first 150 pages or so are on the syntax of PHP. The last 20 of those are on Object Oriented PHP (version 4), and about 10 of those are on the basics of OO programming. So I wouldn't try and learn OO PHP from this book (see Advanced PHP Programming for that.) Section two, on database programming, starts with an introduction to the basics of database design, moves onto the mechanics of MySQL and it's interaction with PHP. It finishes with a very brief section on PEAR. This is the part that caused me to give the book only three stars. First, the database access uses string concatenation, which is error prone and insecure. Even worse, the section on PEAR, which supports the '?' operator in SQL statements, fails to mention that feature or it's advantages. Since most PHP programming is about putting a face on a database, teaching how to do databases the right way is extremely important. For a lesson in how to do database access in PHP right see another SAMS PHP book; Advanced PHP Programming. Up to chapter twenty-four the book progresses by talking about each technology (e.g. authentication, date manipulation, regular expressions, etc.) as a sort of stove pipe. The chapters are generally short, and are well written and consistent. Graphics are used sparingly, which is appreciated. With chapter twenty-four and beyond the author presents common tasks (e.g. login pages, shopping carts, etc.) with example applications. This is an effective technique as most of these problems involve bringing together several PHP technologies and understanding how to use them as a whole. Overall I liked this book. I did take exception to the SQL problems in section two and I marked my review down because database access is so important to PHP web development. WIth the caveat that the reader should look elsewhere for advice on proper PHP database development I would recommend this book to anyone with some web experience who wants to develop dynamic sites with PHP.
Rating: 
Summary: A bunch of code... little explanation
Review: This book has a bunch of code and little explanation. I don't understand how this can actually be published. The authors didn't take the time to even explain half of it, just dumped code and left us wondering.
Rating:
Summary: Not a bad book, but you can do better!
Review: I purchased this book in '03 hoping to get a complete over of MySQL as an addition to the already familiar PHP. I was hoping to see a lot of focus on MySQL and what I could do to fully understand it's integration. What I got wasn't exactly what I was hoping for... This book focuses on PHP alone and MySQL alone, leaving the integration for it's projects starting about half way through the book. I was dissapointed also on the length of MySQL query language. The section skimmed over MANY of the operators, only explaining about 1/3 of them, and leaving the other 2/3 to learn from months of trial and error. I was thoroughly dissapointed that they even kept things such as joining tables to perhaps 1 sample query and a 2 paragraphs at most. I was hoping to see beyond "SELECT * from table WHERE ID > 5 ORDER by title DESC", but that is about as far as most of this book will take you... I also found that the coding techniques used are a bit too "orthodox" and not very present day. I say this because they use far too many lines/functions than needed. I've probably learned more from re-writing their code to my style than reading their code in general. There are only about 1 or 2 coding mistakes (which I've found, however I guess that was a learning experience) that plague this book, so I have to definitely say the integrity is excellent. If you are looking to start PHP and MySQL I'd reccomend this as a reference book, keep the core learning seperate. I'd reccomend the PHP Bible (which touches on MySQL integration nearly as much as this does..), but I have not yet found THE MySQL book. I'd reccomend the MySQL Bible but it goes far beyond PHP and not into queries as much as it could... In summary: Learning book? Eh.. Reference book? Sound's more like it..
Rating:
Summary: For the beginning web developer
Review: The book starts off in a hurried description of the PHP syntax and automatically dives the reader into a project. The first project, obviously is creating your first PHP program. The source code in the book is functional, with no errors (at least from what I've encountered). The few issues I have thus far are in the later chapters of the book. For the experienced developer, some of the material in the text is verbose and verbatim, it repeats things that are common to developers (security and whatnot), but it's perfect for the beginner. The book goes onto cover basic authentication in Chapter 14, and then details it in a much later chapter. The things I love about the book is that it covers PHP sessions, working with the file system directly (Windows AND UNIX), FTP uploads, and it even shows you how to make your own WebMail page using PHP. MySQL is aptly covered, the book does not go into detail with SQL, it covers the basic commands such as create database, use database, create table, insert commands, and some basic authentication stuff. It even has a small Apache tutorial in the Appendix. It's a good book for the beginner, I bought it because I like the format of the book and the examples.
Rating:
Summary: So much going for it. . .BUT
Review: Oh, this book seems to have so much going for it. At first, I was going to say that this was one of the most comprehensible computer books I've read in a long time (why, oh why can't computer people write in a manner that is clearly understood to their readers?) - the authors seem to have the rare knack of explaining things clearly. Then, however, I discovered that there are errors in the book and the examples in the book DO NOT match those on the CD. The book also isn't clear on what needs to be entered, precisely, in order for the examples to match those on the CD. I finally ended up comparing the two in order to make sense of things - this wasted a LOT of my time. Fortunately, my background is such that, so far, I've been able to figure things out. When the problems started, I looked for an errata sheet - both on the publisher's site (Sam's Publishing) and on the site provided in the book (http://www.lukelaura.com). Nothing on Sam's, at all, and the other site is nothing more than an advertisement for the book. Ugh! This book had so much promise - had a better job been done with editing, it could have easily earned FIVE STARS. At this point, I'm still able to figure things out and, compared to all of the other books I've tried, so far, on PHP and MySQL, this one still makes some sense. Oh well...
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