Rating: 
Summary: One of the best books on PHP4 ever! I don't sweat no more!!
Review: ...This book takes it aim at teaching PHP by coding, among other things, FTP clients, e-mail clients, some advanced data structures, session management and secure programming. This text will also show you exactly how to create state of the art web applications that scale well, utilize databases optimally, and connect to a back-end network using a multi-tiered approach. _____PHP is an open source, server-side HTML-embedded web-scripting language for creating dynamic web pages. Outside of being browser-independent, it offers a simple and universal cross-platform solution for e-commerce, complex web, and database-driven applications.________***Note: Are you looking for this book? Find us on eBay, our eBay seller ID is: (raffiudeen*illahideen) OR find us on Amazon, our Amazon seller ID is amazingoffers2003. If you wish to contact us for your own brand new copy at a amazing discount price, our email address is amazingoffers2003 at y a h o o. c o m
Rating:
Summary: THE book
Review: Good book to start serious programming with DB (MySQL or other ones) outside of learning to do
real medium to large scale web app development with PHP.
Also notice that this book has been written by authoritative peers like Luis Argerich (i am a fan of
his phpbuilder articles), Thomas,Rawat and scollo(from the earlier Professional PHP Programming) and
James Moore (moderator on PHP-GTK) and reviewed by many memebers from the PHP quality team.I am mastering professional PHP knowledge undaunted.BUY IT NOW!
Rating: 
Summary: OK, but sloppy
Review: Having previously read Wrox's Professional ASP Programming, I tried this book, hoping for something of equal merit. This volume is has some decent material, but is marred by a tendecy to sloppiness. Firstly, as other reviewers have noted, there are too many authors (count 'em - 16!), which is unnecessary, and leads to inconsistencies in presentation. The book could quite easily have been authored by a single writer. There are only a few chapters that required specialist knowledge. For example, the early chapters are quite good at advising the reader on PHP settings. Since there's no option explicit in PHP,the author correctly advises the reader to increase their error setting to report unused variables. Later, however, much of the code uses uninitialised variables. This is particularly the case in the chapter on form handling, the approach to which is too crude, and uses form variables directly in code, whereas a better approach would be to capture them and process them using isset(). The isset() function isn't even covered in this chapter,but is used correctly in other chapters. Secondly, while the converstational tone of Wrox books is often appealing, it can also be a problem at times. The presentation is not always comprehensive enough, and Wrox authors have a tendency to give overly clever examples. Strangely, there's no reference section. I found some of the explanations sloppy and confusing, especially the section of session variables. (I still can't get the WAP application to work properly.) Thirdly, the chapter on OO design leaves the reader stranded. After a decent theoretical discussion, the writer informs the reader that there will be no code examples, as the reader now knows enough theory to work an example out for themselves! If I've paid for the book, I don't really want to have it set homework for me. Fourthly, there are an annoying number of errors in the code. Many of these are corrected in the online errata, but there are quite a few that aren't at present. Furthermore, some of them are not typos, but seem to be the result of misconceptions on the part of the writer. This tends to reinforce the impression that some of the authors are relatively inexperienced. Lastly, there are a large number of errors in the downloadable code. I suppose supplied code should be seen as a bonus, but it's poor quality control, and greatly adds to the user's annoyance.
Rating:
Summary: Good Buy
Review: I bought this book based on the reviews in amazon.com and I am fully justified with the money I spent. I recommend this
book for professionals as well as those uninitiated to PHP. I particularly liked the I18n coverage and the case study on PHP weather--it helped a long way in complementing my post graduate research report.
Rating: 
Summary: Overrated
Review: I bought this book due to the great feedback that had been posted at the time of my purchase. I regret to inform the community that this book will waste your time and money. Many of the descriptions are directly from the PHP website (example... in_array) and do nothing to expand on its usage. If someone finds a PHP book equivalent to O'Reilly's "Programming Perl" please let me know. That is the best book I've read for any language... I just wish there was something like it in PHP. Beginnners and advanced developers should avoid this book unless you have a piece of furniture in the house that is REALLY uneven.
Rating:
Summary: Extremely helpful PHP book
Review: I have been an ASP programmer for nearly 3.5 years now.It's almost 6 months now that i have dropped working on legacy operating syatems and had been on the lookout for an Open source scripting solution.I tried my hand at Perl, but i lost myself in the jargon.I picked up this PHP book on reviews from a friend at the bay area PUG and by golly!!! i seem to have stepped through the first half of this book with ease... it has definitely spurred my interset in learning PHP as an option for my work and i hope to learn a lot more from the entire book
Rating:
Summary: Must read PHP4 book
Review: I have read several books on PHP, but found this one particularly interesting because of the well structured-ness of the content.
All the topics are fit in a logical progression and i could feel myself gaining more knowledge at each progressive step. However, individual chapters did not help me become an expert in that area, but i felt justified with the money i spent on 974 pages of quality PHP reading.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: I just bought this book in my local BORDERS, and I gotta say this is by far the best PHP book out there. Took me 2 hours to decide which booh to buy, and in the end, this was the best.
Extensive professional explanations and it's well worth the money.
Rating:
Summary: Both for Profesisonals and Beginniners
Review: I learnt PHP3 from Leon Atkinson's Core PHP programming, but i had to refer to the manual and the list archives for several problems.I came across this book recently from KY's review corner - I have been able to raise my level of PHP knowledge after reading through this book.This book is an asset for Professional PHP developers who can refresh their PHP knowledge with the excellent case studies. For beginners there are several examples throughout the book that will help them understand how to use PHP to create fully featured active sites.This book also has extensive database treatment - using PHP with MySQL,PostgreSQL and ODBC.
It is a must for anyone wanting to use PHP or make the move from PHP3 to PHP4!
Rating:
Summary: Good Stuff...but
Review: I own a copy of this book and i must admit that it has been worth my money. To my surprise i found that there were no appendices in this book which meant i had no function refernces or listing for configuration options. Luckily for me i had the PHP Pocket reference from O'reilly. Only today did i discover that there was indeed appendices for the book, but that they were online.It would have saved me the hassle of a few frustrating moments, had this online reference been mentioned in the TOC. I am still voting 5 stars because i am justified with the idea of online references esp. given that PHP is the language of the web. I will recommend this book to anyone who has basic.
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