Professional PHP Web Services

Rating:
Summary: Taught by amateurs
Review: ...the content is actually quite good. I was surprised to see that there were more OO examples and the book's structure was well thought-out. I wouldn't expect too much from a book on PHP Web Services however, since PHP has a lot of maturing to do and you won't learn much else other than XML-RPC, SOAP and WSDL and how to use these technologies in PHP. I believe an amateur can learn these technologies using PHP in the better part of a day.

Another gripe about the book is that it's the standard price of a Wrox book but it's only around 500 pages (unlike the usual 800-1000). If you refer to initial arguments, where is that extra money going for these missing pages? Surely not to the contributors.

In any case, please think twice before you purchase the book. Not only is this a highly specialized topic that can be easily learned without the book, but the overall value and ethical consequences make it even worse. Don't expect the contributors to benefit from your purchase.

Rating:
Summary: So much potential, but very poor implementation
Review: I have been programming with PHP for 5+ years and loved it. I was ready to delve into the world of web services and SOAP...I had high expectations for this book, but it failed in every aspect. It was poorly organized, poorly written, poorly coded, and poorly explained. It is one of the worst books I have ever bought.

Rating:
Summary: So much potential, but very poor implementation
Review: I have been programming with PHP for 5+ years and loved it. I was ready to delve into the world of web services and SOAP...I had high expectations for this book, but it failed in every aspect. It was poorly organized, poorly written, poorly coded, and poorly explained. It is one of the worst books I have ever bought.

Rating:
Summary: Very nice one
Review: I think it's a nice book, good job! It introduces wide range about the relationship between PHP and the web services, it's a good base to start. However I have to tell, that there are some bugs (or the descriptions are not clear, don't know) in the example sources, for example I've found one in the chapter about security (Chapter 6).

This is a problem, but with it, I still could recommend this book for everybody not familiar with Web Services, and would like to learn all the related technologies. As it is true at other books, too: you can learn all these things from the web, but you can just find these together in this (or other) book, and you can read it conveniently at your bed with your girlfriend. :)

Rating:
Summary: This book simply rawks!!!
Review: The content in this book simply rawks - all the latest information on how you can do web services using PHP.There is a wealth on information on how you can use PHP and SOAP (using popular libraries such as NuSOAP, PEAR::SOAP and ezSOAP), PHP and SOAP's front-runner (XML-RPC), how you can discover web services using UDDI. Infact, there is a quality library for PHP::UDDI, that was created for the book, and which the authors have very kindly hosted on sourceforge (phpuddi.sourceforge.net/).

This is *the* book on the subject. Check it out today.

Rating:
Summary: Why so many bad reviews?
Review: Why so many bad reviews? Many of the authors are mad because the company had went out of business and many of them did not get paid royalty fees. In response, it is no doubt that they would wish the publisher to not profit from their own work - there is no justice in that. The truth is that this book is quite good, but due to the circumstances surrounding the entire thing, there is a lot of negativity in the air. I would suggest that you buy the book on its merits rather than the reviews, which I can only honestly suspect are all written by constituents in one form or another with different agendas.

Rating:
Summary: Why so many bad reviews?
Review: Why so many bad reviews? Many of the authors are mad because the company had went out of business and many of them did not get paid royalty fees. In response, it is no doubt that they would wish the publisher to not profit from their own work - there is no justice in that. The truth is that this book is quite good, but due to the circumstances surrounding the entire thing, there is a lot of negativity in the air. I would suggest that you buy the book on its merits rather than the reviews, which I can only honestly suspect are all written by constituents in one form or another with different agendas.