Rating: 
Summary: An extremely good tutorial.
Review: The first thing that caught my attention was that this book had me programming a real-world script, that applied exactly to what I wanted to do, within the first chapter! The tutorial just got better from there. This is a good reference book as well but I wouldn't buy it for that purpose. It really is a tutorial and should be read front to back, as opposed to somewhere in between. In that capacity it is excelent.I had about four months experience teaching myself PERL (a language similar to PHP) before I picked up this book. After only a few days with this book I was easily performing more complex tasks with PHP than I was ever able to do with PERL! Frankly if you're still doing web/database integration in PERL you're living in the Dark Ages.
Rating:
Summary: Very Informative
Review: I am new to the world of PHP and MYSQL web applications development. I have to say that this book provides the necessary foundation to allow anyone to build a transaction worthy web site. I was very pleased with both the quality of the writing as well as the insightful examples. Will be on my software development bookshelf for quite some time.
Rating:
Summary: PHP/MySQL - Start Here!
Review: I am a complete programming novice (but experienced web designer) and this book is getting me up to speed on dynamic web development with PHP/MySQL. It gives you enough of the programming basics without any fluff! It also gives real world examples and not just lists of functions and reference material. This should be your first book if you want to learn this great open source way to database driven scripted sites. A full-on recommendation!
Rating:
Summary: great for beginners
Review: I started this book one day and got all wrapped up in it. I couldnt put it down. All I wanted to do is read. I recommend this book to anyone who needs to learn, or wants to learn PHP with mySQL intergration
Rating:
Summary: Finally! A book that doesn't teach what they know
Review: I finally found a book that teaches you what you need to know and not what this other book writers know. I've been trying to learn PHP and MySql on my own and this book is putting me in the right track. It also throws a little Apache server on the side. Like any book, you will not find al the answers but if you are out to learn this book will not disappoint you.
Rating:
Summary: Best book out there...
Review: I have many books on this subject and this is by far the best. If you want to learn php/mysql and find good uses for it this is the book you should have. There are some that just talk PHP that are better on that level but for doing both in one book this is the one.
Rating:
Summary: This book is better than the rest.
Review: I have found this book to be the best book on this topic. Yes, I have read and own almost all the others. This book covers many of the little things that are left out of the other books, and I am glad of the things that they left out of this book. They left out the long indexes full of mostly useless stuff and the chapters and chapters of functions that some of the other books feel like they need to include while all that is online at php.net. I feel that this book is much better than the "core PHP programming book" and the only book that comes near it is the MySQL/PHP Database book by Greenspan and Bulger. If you have the Greenspan book you might be upset that many of the walk-though examples are nearly the same but this book adds more. I found it easier to understand the examples on the CD because they give a good explanation of what each page of the web application does. Certainly a winner.
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Summary: Real World Examples and Projects
Review: A ton of information in easily read words and format. This is not a beginner book though they have the "crash course" section, but I picked it up after PHP Essentials and I am having no trouble following and understanding the text and examples. My hardest problem with PHP is that I'm "a designer that does programming." This book makes that transition much easier by not talking over my head. As I work through this book, I get more and more excited about being able to use PHP and things that were never clear about dynamic web sites become more and more clear. And because the examples are real world, it makes it easy to incorporate the what they're teaching into my current projects. Excellent book - WELL worth the dollars.
Rating:
Summary: A worthy addition to your collection
Review: One of the great things about PHP is how much good documentation there is online. The official manual at php.net is great, and so are many of the unofficial tutorial sites. Sometimes though, it is nice to have a book in your hand. This is one of those books. It provides useful examples and commentary at a depth you do not normally see on a web site. It is up to date, and includes PHP4 functions like session control, although I did not see a mention of MySQL transactions which were added recently. I have a few other PHP books, this is not the only one I like, but it is the most recently published and therefore up to date of the ones I like. The sample code usually works straight away, but authors of PHP books should be more careful to specify what settings they use that makes the code work. Do you need magic quotes on, do you need extra modules installed etc? This book is pretty careful, they always tell you the big things, like extra modules, but as I already had PHP installed and did not follow their install instrucitons, sometimes different configurations meant code needed to be fiddled with.
Rating:
Summary: How to develop dynamic, secure e-commerce Web sites
Review: PHP And MySQL Web Development teaches the reader to develop dynamic, secure e-commerce Web sites. The reader will learn to integrate and implement these technologies by following real-world examples and working sample projects. PHP And MySQL Web Development also covers related technologies needed to build a commercial Web site such as SSL, shopping carts, and payment systems. Intermediate - Advanced, 880pp.
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