Rating: 
Summary: Good, if its what you want...
Review: Before buying this, you should have a SOLID grounding in the theory and practice of php. This book does offer solutions, even ones that seem elegant. BUT, it never really stops to explain the actual coding. It takes time to explain only the approach they take to the problem and the rationale for their approach. It assumes you understand the code and moves right along. You will not find ANY hand-holding here. Moreover, of the solutions presented, at least two use XML. So, you might also want to have some xml skills on hand, if you are to make use of a significant part of this book. Once again, the book seems good and you can learn from it. But, understand that you need a solid php foundation to effectively use this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Share a review
Review: Folks - i bought this book after i read Manuel Lemos' review of the same. It pretty much summed up,all that i thought about this book (after i put it down). I thought i should share the same here for the benefit of amazon[.com] customers. Here goes: "Manuel Lemos, December 15, 2002
Often learning by example is the fastest and easier way to learn for many people. This is particularly true for people willing to learn how to develop solutions that solve their software needs. This is the focus of the book PHP4 Web Development solutions. This book presents with great detail solutions for a significant number of common types of Web applications. These are not at all trivial applications. These are applications that address the needs of many sites. The list applications is long but I will try to summarize the topic that they address and represent more frequent needs of people developing Web applications. Those applications implement: directory of subscribers of a site, online messaging, online multimedia content publishing, WAP applications for mobile devices, job board, classified ads board, a search engine and a portal. Most applications are database driven and come with detailed database schema definition with detailed explanations on the purpose of the tables and their relationships. These database applications use PEAR::DB as API. However, all of them are MySQL specific. This means that they may need to be adapted to work with other types of databases because currently PEAR::DB does not provide complete database independence support as it would be needed. Most applications use either Smarty or PHPlib packages to render the user interfaces from template page files. This is useful to demonstrate how to separate the presentation layer from the applications' logic layer with all the convenience that arises from that. Overall this is a very useful book that can be used to learn from practical examples of real world applications. If you were look for a PHP Web applications cookbook to help you to learn about common application and design and implementation techniques, this book is surely a good choice."
Rating: 
Summary: Left me wanting more
Review: I have been a professional PHP developer for a number of years now, since PHP3 was still being actively developed. I have ready nearly every book on the topic, and have worked on more projects than I will ever remember to put in my Portfolio.
I picked this book up after hearing some fairly good ratings on it, and couldn't wait to get started.
I picked the book up and decided to spend a Saturday reading it (As I do with almost all of my new books). However, I found myself putting the book down not too long later...
This book has scattered bits of good information that I did flag, but I found much of it repetitive or almost useless. I was very disappointed by the use of Smarty templates, I found myself picking through the Smarty code just trying to get to the actual application (I build what I need for designs, I don't need to rely on a system like Smarty).
While I did appreciate the sections on XML, the Pseudo-coding (Algorithm breakdown), and the table diagrams, I was very discouraged by the coding practices such as print("<a href=\"$page\">link"); I personally feel that escape characters are very unorganized and look sloppy.
The section on creating a news service was rendered useless because it has (seemingly implied) gaps in the code, and relies heavily on Smarty templates, again very disappointing.
To shorten the rest of the rating up I'll just be real brief. The section on building a system for phones browsing your website was useless, as well as the wireless MyStuff server, the Advanced CMS section (as well as the Simple Search Engine) both had very poor programming practices, and the writers cover the same concepts over and over in their own ways (Which can get quite boring..)
This book seems too difficult for the beginners, perhaps appropriate for the intermediate who want to learn Smart and some OK (but not great) programming practices, and definitely frustrating for us advanced programmers.
I originally was going to rate this book a 4, but now that I'm done with my review I have decided it only earns a 3...
Rating:
Summary: PHP4 Web Development Solutions
Review: I highly recommend that prior to buying this book, you go to the Wrox web site ... to preview the sample chapter. I found that I simply did not like the style of the book. It's "dive-right-in" approach of giving you a bunch of case studies, where each chapter outlines their approach to a particular problem, complete with source code, but with little explanation of techniques. You must register your book before you can download the source to the example code from the Wrox site. I also didn't like the heavy use of the Smarty template engine either. Simply put, I prefer the incremental approach like that of found in other books like "Web Database Applications with PHP & MySQL", by David Lane and Hugh Williams.
Rating:
Summary: PHP4 Web Development Solutions
Review: I highly recommend that prior to buying this book, you go to the Wrox web site ... to preview the sample chapter. I found that I simply did not like the style of the book. It's "dive-right-in" approach of giving you a bunch of case studies, where each chapter outlines their approach to a particular problem, complete with source code, but with little explanation of techniques. You must register your book before you can download the source to the example code from the Wrox site. I also didn't like the heavy use of the Smarty template engine either. Simply put, I prefer the incremental approach like that of found in other books like "Web Database Applications with PHP & MySQL", by David Lane and Hugh Williams.
Rating:
Summary: WROX Solutions Vs. ORA Cookbook
Review: I ordered a copy of the "Professional PHP 4 web Development Solutions WROX", along with a copy of the "PHP Cookbook ORA" . Upon reading both these books, i thought i should offer a honest review comparing the two: Both the books were informative in their own right o The WROX book offered complete solutions to real world problems - a Simple/advanced CMS (the core of which you can plug into your site), a simple search engine, a classified ads board, and lots of cool creative case study solutions that i could extend to use in my hobby sites. The content was very enterprising and all of the solutions presented are the most popular one's amongst web developers these days. More interesting is that these solutions can be completely re-used and extended into your projects. However, the downside of this book is that you would need to have prior PHP knowledge either picked up from WROX' Professional PHP 4 (as is mentioned as a pre-requisite in the book) or from the Programming PHP ORA, or any another competent professional PHP programming books in the market. o The ORA book had small snippets of code based solutions (very similar to the PHP Developers cookbook from Sterling and Andrei) that are very useful for programmers who are confounded with small to medium coding problems. However, there was nothing enterprising about the coverage, that one could not achieve from using a combination of the online docs + mailing lists. Another downside was that i could not find full solutions that i could re-use in my projects. On the Other hand, i found So the bottomline is: oCare for a full meal - Pick up the Wrox book.
oCare for an appetiser - Pick up the ORA book. I am posting this same review for both the books (so customers can benefit from it). However, i have ranked the Wrox book, a notch above this one, simply because i wanted a burp:-)
Rating:
Summary: A Promise
Review: I simply enjoyed this book and all the solutions presented in it.
I had earlier mastered PHP from reading "Beginning PHP4" and "Professional PHP4" from the same publisher, and this book was a natural choice to make.
I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone that has a sparse to decent knowledge of PHP - you will love the engaging concepts,designs, code methodolgy and spanking case study solutions.Promise.
Rating:
Summary: A Promise
Review: I simply enjoyed this book and all the solutions presented in it.
I had earlier mastered PHP from reading "Beginning PHP4" and "Professional PHP4" from the same publisher, and this book was a natural choice to make.
I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone that has a sparse to decent knowledge of PHP - you will love the engaging concepts,designs, code methodolgy and spanking case study solutions.Promise.
Rating:
Summary: Real Solutions for Web Deveopment
Review: Seems Wrox is going great with PHP titles with pretty good collection coming one after another! Being into web development myself, this book has come as a great relief. It has given functions and methods with ready to use solutions. Could actually put them to use modifying them, plugging them in various applications. A must have for the Web Developers / Designers!
Rating:
Summary: Every PHP web developer ought to own this
Review: This "solutions" book expects its reader to have basic PHP syntactical knowledge (that which can be learnt from looking at the PHP manual) or any of the several beginning level PHP
books that are available for purchase from amazon (or otherwise). If you have a nice working knowledge of PHP or web development in general you will be benefited. Knowledge
of a database solution is added value advantage. Athough this may sound like a huge list of pre-requisites, the bare minimum of working HTML knowledge will also suffice (again note that most of the "solutions" presented here use the smarty templates)
Although i have been involved with PHP for quite some time noe,
i found the design solutions and the approach to code (and it's
reusablity) very attractive.
This book is definitely of value to all web developers, that don't want to reinvent the wheel. Any/every PHP programmer/developer/designer should have it.
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