Rating: 
Summary: Very good for getting up to speed
Review: This book is great for those with some experience in programming in C/C++ and little or no experience with server-side scripting languages. After struggling for a while learing PHP using the on-line manual, this book enabled me to get up to speed writing useful PHP scripts for some DB-backed websites. I chose to use PostgreSQL rather than MySQL and I found their examples were fairly easy to adapt. The only gaffe I have with the book is that some of the examples have some bugs, but if you pay attention to the first seven chapters and use the On-line Manual as a reference, the bugs are fairly easy to spot and fix. I highly recommend this book for anyone needing to get a website up and running fast!
Rating:
Summary: Coming from ASP, or nothing at all, it's still good.
Review: I just have to say that this book isn't the best written or organized book, but hey, they're programmers and doing their best. However, it still is great reading for someone who is coming from Microsoft's ASP or from no experience in server side scripting. The book covers the basics on just about everything and goes into enough detail on the important stuff so you can start coding immediately.The beginning starts out covering the basics of PHP and server side scripting in general. This explains the difference between it and other languages and also how to use PHP in the first place. The following chapters cover more advanced features available to any programming language, but that still need to be explained specifically to this language (i.e. arrays, objects, functions, strings). Then you get into the good stuff. The book covers relational and non-relational databases, but spends almost all of its time on the mySQL database server. Then it (barely) shows you what LDAP is and how you use it. If you bought this book for LDAP, you shouldn't have. It then goes on to cover how PHP works with XML and the basics of XML. I have to say that these basics were better than some other stuff I've seen. Following that, the book explains how to generate and manipulate images using PHP (a very cool feature) and then how to send and recieve e-mail using the POP3 and IMAP protocols. And then it explains how to connect to different types of servers using the TCP protocol (connecting to a whois for example). And later on it explains security, such as SSL, but it doesn't go into much depth on this topic and spends much of the chapter explaining how to set up SSL and obtain a security certificate. And finally, and most importantly, it explains error handling and debugging. So if you are a beginner to PHP and looking to get your hands into each part of the language, this is the book. And in the back of the book, it has a case study for a Shopping Cart that is fairly useful if you know how to fix code and there is also an appendix that covers just about every single command that could be used in PHP. By the way, PHP is WAAAAAAAAAY better than ASP.
Rating: 
Summary: Probably the best computer book I've ever bought
Review: I came from non-programming background. The most advance I can get before buying this book is just ms-office and basic HTML. However, after spending a few days with it, I am quite sure that even a guy from accounting background like me can do server-side scripting. The book gives me clear explaination, and no guess work along the way. I love the XML part the most as it makes a new technology, XML, interesting enough to continue my curiousity. Right now, I am working on Professional XML from wrox.
Rating:
Summary: Good book and good PHP/MySQL install section
Review: I come from an ASP beackground and found the book to be very approachable. I wanted to learn PHP so that I could start programing dynamic pages on Linux with Apache. I first started out by Using Redhat's RPMs for both PHP and MySQL. Since Redhats dist of PHP did not include support for MySQL I was faced with the task of installing the source PHP dist. I also went ahead and unistalled the MySQL RPM and installed the source MySQL dist by following the instructiions in the book. This process went smoothly for someone used to the point and click MS world. If I had to follow the PHP and/or MySQL documentation I would have been lost. So, if your trying out Linux/MySQL/PHP this book should get you up and started pretty easily. As with any programming book there are some things that take more than one reading, or further investigation into other sources, but if you have any programming experience you will be up and programing in PHP quickly.
Rating: 
Summary: Go learn C and C++ first
Review: This is a very good book. It's not only the list of all of PHP command, but it also has some chapters called Case Study, where it explains about making shopping cart and bulletin baord with PHP and MySQL. But you have to know C and C++ before you read this book. I know C but I don't know C++ (the OOP). That's why I stop reading this book, and buy some OOP book. Maybe I'll continue to read it after I finished my OOP book.
Rating:
Summary: *required reading*
Review: If you're getting into PHP, this is the book to get. Though it doesn't cover everything (it'd probably be 3,000,000 pages if it did), it's very well written and has great content (and great examples). I suggest combining this with the on-line documentation @ php.net (PHP's main distribution site) -- if not picking up a few extra references. :)
Rating:
Summary: excellent learning examples, interesting apps.
Review: Boy, my reviews of Wrox books probably seem a little boring, since there is so little fault to find with them. The Wrox programming books are really the best books on the market, and it's interesting that the Oreilly books haven't yet published a decent book on php or xml stuff. I liked the way this PHP book explained the various setup options and the amount of space discussing mysql (which is a major reason why people are using php anyway). What distinguishes this book from the rest are the examples. The tutorial part of the book works with two simple projects, an online job app and an address book, which were easy enough to follow. Actually, I found this book to be a useful intro to cgi script writing in addition to php. Also interesting were 4 case studies about ways to use php. Example: did you know that with the qt libraries, php can manipulate images (such as zooming, and overwriting images with text)? That is amazing! A chapter on phorum explains how a discussion software uses php, and another one explains the use of a shopping cart (I tend to agree with the other reader who thinks that this is not necessarily the best example to use). The book also describes other things like using php for file management and storage, email configuration, and network connections. Some other topics covered in depth include: xml, security and database integration. The appendix has many things. First, obviously, it has an alphabetical list of all the php functions. It also has a helpful appendix on http headers and another on browser support of html tags. This last thing is only somewhat handy to have, because web developers reading this book are past the point of needing browser support info re legacy html tags. Instead developers should be worrying about xml and xslt. Some technical books increase the size of their book by stuffing a lot of code throughout it. Wrox seems to like to increase the size by including large and somewhat irrelevant appendices. This book made me realize many new potential ways in which php could be used. That is the most valuable thing about the book. I have not tried very much of the code, so I can't comment on whether it all works. But (to summarize) it will really broaden your horizons of what php is capable of. The only reason I've given it 4 stars is that I haven't read the whole thing yet.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good examples, not as much for teaching
Review: This was a decent book, it got you pretty much up to speed with the basics in the early chapters, but as the book progresses, it becomes mainly examples and explanations. The same code is rewritten again and again. I have this book and PHP Essentials. I think this book is PROBABLY worth buying AFTER you have read PHP Essentials, but Essentials is a far better introduction to PHP than this book is. I know the title is Professional PHP Programming, but some of the explanations of the sample code are criminally incomplete.
Rating: 
Summary: Was not happy
Review: The quality of this book was very poor in my opinion... The samples of projects were not very good, and I would recommend that you do not purchase this book.
Rating:
Summary: This is <b>THE</b> Book !
Review: I have bought or looked at the other books, Core PHP, PHP Essentials, and several others. This is the BEST one of them all there is no doubt. Get this book, go through it and you will be up and running in no time
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