Rating: 
Summary: Dreadful examples and confusing text
Review: I have many years experience programming and have been doing PHP for awhile. This book has lots of philosophy and not many concrete examples of advanced PHP technique.The section on objects is especially poor. It reads as if the authors don't understand OOP and the examples are extremely poor. (I have over ten years OOP analysis, design, and programming in numerous OO languages, so, I should know) I found myself wasting a lot of time playing with sample code that didn't work, was poorly written, and certainly didn't illustrate what was being discussed. The book is so poor, I wonder if those who wrote the good reviews actually read and used the book or just looked through it.
Rating: 
Summary: A must have PHP book. You have to own it!
Review: I just got the book today, and reading the first two chapters proved useful already. This book does not tell you about the obvious stuff. All the contrary, it starts right off by telling you about some of PHPs oddities (one of them I came across that was not documented in the manual, about arrays). This is the perfect companion to Professional PHP Programming. It is also an excellent guide on how to implement web projects in general. Again, don't hesitate to buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Helps make code more professional
Review: I realize that for experienced programmers, this book brings up a lot of standard topics, but for someone like me (I majored in Art at college) it brings up issues that I really hadn't ever thought of before and as a result I not only have become a better programmer, but I can understand and respect a lot of the decisions that real programmer make.
In particular its discussion on writing organized code should be required reading for all those self-taught webmasters out there.
I didn't really learn much about PHP by reading this book, but I now approach problems differently that I did before. If I was managing a team of programmers, I would make this book required reading because I think it makes some very good arguments for being a disciplined organized programmer instead of just a hacker.
Rating:
Summary: Computer Science Degree needed
Review: I think the authors totally miss the mark as far as their audience. Studies have shown that most web developers have taught themselves and do not have a computer science background. This book, however, assumes you have that background, and so doesn't explain such concepts that are pervasive throughout the book. Furthermore, for being about PHP4, it doesn't use a lot of its most convenient, new features. For instance, you can now use a Perl-style "foreach" to loop through all elements of an array....instead though, the authors insist on always using C-style for loops. These type of loops still work, and were the only type available in PHP3, but the authors don't seem to have been able to adapt to this but instead fell back on their old computer scientist habits. This might also be evidence of this being a "rush job". It certainly seems to have been edited poorly, perhaps in an effort to rush to market to be one of the first PHP books. For instance, in chapter 2, it is mentioned on THREE seperate pages, that PHP lacks garbage collection. It seems that a lot of "boilerplate" text was not removed before going to production. The book, however, is quite blunt about features of PHP4 that it feels don't measure up (such as objects), and I am impressed by the authors' honesty on this point. In my opinion this book still leaves a gap as far as an intermediate book on PHP 4....perhaps the upcoming "Bible" will be the answer.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent book to upgrade our php skill to the next level
Review: I think this book is a must for every PHP programmer who would like to upgrade their skill to advance level. This book is not for a novice. If you would like to know the "in and out" of PHP, and becoming expert in PHP, you must buy this book :)
Rating:
Summary: An excellent book to upgrade our php skill to the next level
Review: I think this book is a must for every PHP programmer who would like to upgrade their skill to advance level. This book is not for a novice. If you would like to know the "in and out" of PHP, and becoming expert in PHP, you must buy this book :)
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing lack of depth and reliance on the CD
Review: I was disappointed with this book. As others have pointed out, this should not be someone's first book on, or first exposure to, PHP. You cannot learn PHP from this book. That's OK, I've been using PHP for a couple years now. I was looking to take my PHP application development skills to the next level, beyond coding and into engineering. And the book gets sooooo close to being able to do that...and then just turns away from the challenge. Here are some specifics: * Many times the authors suggest you refer to other books to learn about other topics in software engineering to learn about topics they're breezing by, but they don't make useful suggestions for which books to actually go read. * Many times the authors start discussing a major, important topic, explain a few details, and then implicitly refer you to the source code that's included on the CD. * I wanted to learn about the optimal layout and organization of files and routines in a project. The authors make an initial stab at describing a good file system organization, but then fail to follow up and finish the job, leaving 80% unsaid. I suppose the example application on the CD will give me more info. * What ought to be the heart of the book, a walkthrough of a real-world "knowledge repository" application the authors wrote for a client, is a mere 12 pages. You're advised, once again, to look at the source on the CD to learn more. It's maddening. The authors are clearly PHP *experts*, and good software engineers to boot. And they know what they ought to be telling their reader, they just don't do it in any detail. This would probably be an outstanding book if it was 150-200 pages longer (it's under 400 pages), with 75% of that dedicated to walking through all the design decisions and code explanations for their sample app.
Rating:
Summary: Pedantic, better books out there
Review: I'm quite unhappy with this book. The book is entitled "Web Application Development with PHP 4.0. The first few chapters however, seem to be more of a lecture as to how to name variables and how to work with a team developing code. This should have been an appendix. This book is misnamed and tedious. I much prefer MySQL book written by Paul DuBois, and PHP Essentials book by Julie C. Meloni. Both of those are more down to earth, accessible, and informative.
Rating:
Summary: Such a great language - such a great book!
Review: I've been a professional programmer for 10 years now (client/server applications), but I haven't made the move to WEB programming yet. Some colleagues pointed me to PHP for web development and I immediately fell in love with it (coming from C/C++). Still, many basic concepts of web development were completely hidden for me and while I had no problems to learn PHP's syntax quickly, I didn't quite understand all the meanings of sessions, XML, web security, and so on. Then I found this book and I was ENLIGHTED.Do I hate all those fluffy computers books with no meaningful content but lots of source and function references! In contrast, the authors of this book write in a very straight-forward way, precisely, and still entertaining. And they cover many concepts behind web development, focusing on the implementation with PHP. It may be a lucky coincidence, but the authors wrote exactly about the things that interest me as I'm starting professional web development with PHP. The only chapter I didn't really need was the one about coding conventions because experience has already taught me to comment and format my code. Everything else I can put into practice immediately. I've found particularly helpful the tips&tricks the authors provided; they're clearly taken from their own real life experience and have saved me hours of finding my own solutions to strange problems.Therefore, this book was great for me and I'd warmly recommend it to others. This one is going to stay on my desk for a while! :-)
Rating:
Summary: One of only two PHP books you really need
Review: I've found this book to be one of only two really useful PHP books, and I've read most of them during my three-year long career as PHP programmer. The other one is The PHP Cookbook by Hughes/Zmievski. Together they form a very important part of my technical bookshelf. The publishers should get together and release them as a bundle! The Cookbook gives you the examples for your everyday tasks. The Web Application Development books gives you the bigger picture, the concepts behind the language and web development in general. It is only with the Web Application Development book that I've really understood all the intricancies of session handling, PHPLib, templates, and extending PHP. If you have a basic understanding of PHP, get those two books now. It will save you a lot of time and hassle!
| 
