Rating: 
Summary: If you know PHP, buy this book.
Review: Caveat: I am only basing my review on the sample chapter on Performance Tuning, a draft copy of the chapter on Zend Engine Internals, and the table of contents. Also, I may be biased because I've met George and he's really hard not to like--I'll try harder next time.Go read the reviews of other PHP authors' blogs by doing a Feedster search of this book, you'll find that they highly recommend this book, sometimes over their own books! Looking at the chapter list, you can see the topics covered are not what you see in a typical PHP book. In fact, if you don't know PHP, this is definitely not the book to be learning out of. If you don't know how to program, this is not the book to be learning out of. But if you use PHP professionally and need to get that extra mile or scale your PHP to a large site, then this is definitely the book to be buying. There are simply no books, articles, or web references that provide a bird's eye view of the Zend Engine Internals. That is, until this book. The car analogy in this chapter is very apt for the potential reader of this book on a whole. If all you do is use PHP to get you from "point A to B" you certainly don't need this book. But if you are a PHP professional who is responsible for a high performance website, then you need to know the content of this book cold. The chapter on Performance Tuning has a lot of gems you can't find in any other PHP reference and is essential knowledge when you use PHP on large sites. According to Michael Radwin, George's APD (the tool referenced in the chapter), is used to performance tune parts of Yahoo. But George also gives a nod to competing projects mentioning their strengths and weaknesses. (You can see why it's hard not to like the guy, his pragmatism supersedes his ego in every page.) This neatly complements any other PHP book on the shelf (including any other "professional" PHP book). And I'll definitely have to give an updated review after I've read the other chapters. I'm sure it will pay for itself many times over. Believe me, I speak from experience to know that George speaks from experience (he was involved in a PHP-based company that drove a company I worked for out of business). (And to all of you who have received advanced copies... Grr!)
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Frankly, I think others have already said it so I'll keep this short. This book is a well-organized, easy to read compendium of best practices and advanced development techniques for the professional PHP programmer. Anyone who is developing medium to large scale web applications in PHP should read it.
Rating:
Summary: A superbly organized and definitive instructional guide
Review: George Schlossnagle's Advanced PHP Programming is the superbly organized and definitive instructional guide to developing large-scale PHP applications. Comprehensive, expertly detailed, authoritative, "learner friendly", Advanced PHP Programming is an invaluable addition to any professional quality computer science reference collection.
Rating:
Summary: The best you can get in the advanced book field
Review: I have had the pleasure to read through this book, and I need to say that it is a must for those who take PHP seriously. This is not a usual tutorial type book, which will show an example for every keyword with long-winded explanations, but rather a compilation of best pratices and recommendations which you can build on. The performance section for example (which is one of my favourites) just scratches the surface on how you can use APD to find bottlenecks in your code. George provides you with some common examples, but the real work is still yours, you won't get a step-by-step guide. Another interesting point of this book is that it is not to read from start to the end. You will surely find sections you are already familiar with (Smarty being a prime example), or sections too advanced for you (ex. distributed environments). And George also takes the liberty to use PHP 5 OO code before introducing the new PHP 5 features, and using XML-RPC before the chapter on RPC calls. I find it very valuable to have a lengthy introduction to good coding practices at the begining, since most of the code in the book builds heavily on having a consistent coding style. What I miss from the begining though is the introduction on where can people find details if they are stuck. There are interesting PHP.net services (lxr.php.net for example), which are quite valuable if you are trying to find something in the PHP source, to get an idea of how things work. George having been heavily involved in the APC and APD development knows a lot about PHP and Zend internals. The last section provides you with a current and correct explanation on how you can extend PHP. None of the printed books on the market, or any online tutorial or manual can beat this section currently.
Rating: 
Summary: Very good but doesn't say a word about Windows...
Review: I know PHP and Linux are a great match but people really do run PHP on Windows as well. This book acts like it is Linux only and never mentions the Windows implementation. Other than that this is great.
Rating:
Summary: Only best practices
Review: I started programming only a little over a year ago, with a JavaScript book I bought. Shortly after that I started with PHP. My first PHP book was Glasshaus' "Dreamweaver MX: PHP Web Development" (had to start somewhere). I then bought Sams' "PHP & MySQL web development". That was a big step forward. Meanwhile, I learned all about separating the different layers on the front end through the use of XHTML, CSS and W3C DOM-based JavaScript, and I wanted to learn to achieve the same kind of maintainability in server-side scripting. I wanted more advanced programming techniques and I wanted to learn about 'best practices' and OOP. I then got the SitePoint PHP Anthology volumes. I liked its use of OOP for the various solutions, but they're just that. A lot of cook book style solutions. I learned some good things from looking at all the solutions, but I wanted a more direct approach teaching me how to program PHP on a professional level, rather than just learn how to implement professional solutions. A few weeks ago I got the book Advanced PHP Programming. Finally I have a book that seems to really have what I was looking for. This teaches not only how OOP works in PHP, but it also shows in general how OO techniques apply to different situations (design patterns). A lot of other topics in the book are a little over my head right now, but it is good to know it's there for when I need it. While reading the many examples in the previously mentioned PHP books, I kept asking myself "is this really the best way to handle this?". Not with this one. I somehow know that this book can teach me all I ever wanted to know about programming PHP on a professional level and not teach me any 'bad practices' along the way. This is definately not the first book I should have bought on PHP, but it seems this may well be the last book I will be needing for a long time.
Rating:
Summary: Only best practices
Review: I started programming only a little over a year ago, with a JavaScript book I bought. Shortly after that I started with PHP. My first PHP book was Glasshaus' "Dreamweaver MX: PHP Web Development" (had to start somewhere). I then bought Sams' "PHP & MySQL web development". That was a big step forward. Meanwhile, I learned all about separating the different layers on the front end through the use of XHTML, CSS and W3C DOM-based JavaScript, and I wanted to learn to achieve the same kind of maintainability in server-side scripting. I wanted more advanced programming techniques and I wanted to learn about 'best practices' and OOP. I then got the SitePoint PHP Anthology volumes. I liked its use of OOP for the various solutions, but they're just that. A lot of cook book style solutions. I learned some good things from looking at all the solutions, but I wanted a more direct approach teaching me how to program PHP on a professional level, rather than just learn how to implement professional solutions. A few weeks ago I got the book Advanced PHP Programming. Finally I have a book that seems to really have what I was looking for. This teaches not only how OOP works in PHP, but it also shows in general how OO techniques apply to different situations (design patterns). A lot of other topics in the book are a little over my head right now, but it is good to know it's there for when I need it. While reading the many examples in the previously mentioned PHP books, I kept asking myself "is this really the best way to handle this?". Not with this one. I somehow know that this book can teach me all I ever wanted to know about programming PHP on a professional level and not teach me any 'bad practices' along the way. This is definately not the first book I should have bought on PHP, but it seems this may well be the last book I will be needing for a long time.
Rating: 
Summary: Vague Concept Book - Nothing Immediately Useful
Review: I'm very disappointed with this book. It touches on some concepts that could be useful but there is absolutely nothing in this book a PHP programmer can put to use right away. I've built several web sites using PHP/MySQL and there is not one single thing in this book useful to me.
The book is mainly a survey of concepts, NOT an advanced programming guide. Nothing in this book is fleshed out completely enough to actually begin using it in programming your website.
If you want to actually use any of the ideas in the book, you will have to find a better source of information and documentation for the particular idea or technology. For example, the book has a decent introduction to the Smarty template system but not enough info to actually start using it effectively. There are no performance or feature comparisons between Smarty and other template systems so I'm not even sure how you're supposed to decide if Smarty is right for you (the author merely mentions that Smarty is popular, not why you should or should not use Smarty). Another example: the book talks about three different load generators and gives examples of their use (about 1.5 pages each) but definitely not enough details to begin using any of them.
The only thing of value I got from this book is a conceptual understanding of reverse proxies. Of course, if you actually want to implement a reverse proxy yourself, you're going to need a lot more information than you'll find in this book.
I gave this book two stars instead of one because it is a halfway decent survey. The title, however, is totally inappropriate. It has nothing to do with advanced PHP programming. Instead, the title should be, "Shallow Survey of Concepts and Tools Related to PHP and Web Development".
Rating:
Summary: Just when you thought you knew it all
Review: I've been programming in PHP full-time for 5 years now. I remember when I was first learning, how all the books felt a little over my head, in a good way. Very slowly I understood things that didn't make sense before. And then very slowly I'd start to incorporate those things into my day-to-day programming. After 2 years or so, I missed that feeling. I'd check out new PHP books and flip through every chapter saying, "Yeah yeah yeah...". I realized I had become an expert. I was honestly impressed looking at the table of contents of this book. This is NOT your usual PHP book! That's obvious right away. So I ordered it. And it just arrived yesterday. I was up all night reading it, and again today. This is the most amazing PHP book for experienced PHP programmers I've ever seen. (Wait - this is the ONLY book for experienced PHP programmers I've ever seen!) The author really knows his stuff, and uses best-practices, throughout. Really well thought-out code with a lot to learn from. The fact that it's all based on the new PHP5 style makes it even better! A great way to get to know the new object approach to PHP5: to see it in real-world examples, so that after a few hours with this book it's second-nature. For the first time in three years, I feel wonderfully over-my-head with a LOT to learn here in this one amazing book. Thanks George!
Rating: 
Summary: Great outline; average implementation
Review: PHP *needs* capable writers, like this one. Developers, who take time to write, seem rare - compared to writers, who rarely get to do development projects, anymore. This author is clearly a very experienced practitioner. He outlined a great table of contents.
He advocates and provides guidance for adhering to best practices, regarding design patterns, scalability, caching, unit testing, profiling & tuning etc. The last 1/6 of the book is about C language PHP extension. Excellent "Further reading" suggestions are provided at the end of each chapter.
Out of a high-volume PHP site developer, since 1999, I would expect creative examples. If your site provides Fibonacci sequences and readability scores web services, you'll find this book highly useful. Though on page 1, the author PROMISES NO* "foo-bar" examples, he provides plenty (on pages: 19, 53, 56, 68, 102, 158, 166, 227, 230, 255, 268, 274, 325, 373, 405, 466, 483, 484, 563). Since a reader devotes plenty of time to contemplating foo-bar examples, I came to realize why they bother me so much ... they're unimaginative (i.e. mentally lazy), regarding pragmatic applications for the technology.
I found myself constantly marking comma's in the text - to ease the readability and follow what was being said. If the author doesn't know where to put comma's, the editors should! There's no bold text - to illustrate lessons within the code. As far as I can remember, there's no offer of complete code (e.g. from a website), either.
This is a good, author with generally readable writing style and a wealth of experience to convey. I wouldn't dissuade anyone from buying this book; there's a tremendous amount to be learned and gained from this ... probably the most advanced PHP text, available. I'm just a bit disappointed, because, though it's very good, it could have been world class. I would buy future books from this author; I hope that they get even better!
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