Rating: 
Summary: Allright, but not reccomended
Review: I havent even finished the book yet, and I have found about 5 mistakes in it. Some of these mistakes are at very key concepts, and if a new php programmer doesnt pick up these mistakes, and think they are right... there is going to be problems. I would wait for a revised copy of this book to be available before you purchase...
Rating: 
Summary: great php book
Review: i know that Sams Publishing is often synonymous with the word "lame" (their Mandrake book comes to mind...), but this book is suprisingly good. probably not to difficult for new programmers(just make sure you know some html first!), but for anyone with prior programming experience (especially C++), this book is a breeze. it's straight forward and gets to the meaty content fairly quickly. the mySql sections provide clear and helpful info, however the examples aren't anything spectacular, and few of them really seem to jump out as actually useful, so much of the creative aspect of php scripting is left up to the reader. good book thats alot easier to flip through than the official manual at php.net
Rating: 
Summary: OK
Review: I think the book was OK, just OK. It was well-explained, and is good if you need an answer to a basic question. However throughout the book i saw frequent spelling mistakes, and invalid examples, and contradiction when he explained things and then what he later said. It got so bad that when i was half-way through i couldn't fully trust the book and so discovered the best resource there is, the official website at php.net. The book left out alot of functions that are necessary for alot of coding in the language too. But you can't expect all the functions to be in there. This book is good if your new to PHP, but i would suggest you buy another book, such as the o'reilly published book on PHP by Rasmus Lerdorf. I've spoken to him on the official php.net irc server and he helped co-create the language. Don't buy this book, there are plenty more books out there that provide what this book does and more, and that isn't as rushed as this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Very good PHP primer w/ some typos
Review: I would actually give this book 4.5 stars if I could--content was excellent, but lack of attention to detail in some of the examples brought it down a bit. Also, the author points out some shortcuts in the book (like using the short tag extension syntax <?=$var?> instead of the more verbose <? print $var; ?>,) but never seems to use them in the book, thus not getting new PHP'ers into the habit of using them--perhaps for readability's sake. Having gotten out of the way with what's wrong with this book, here is what's right: -Organized, easy to follow -Lessons are task-oriented, and it's easy to find small code snippets (albeit some of them contain incorrect syntax--that's were experience coding in a different language can be a mitigating factor.) -Serviceable as a lightweight code snippet reference once you've finished the lessons. This is one of the better books out there for newbie PHP'ers out of the 4 or 5 that I've looked at.
Rating:
Summary: Awsome Book!
Review: I'm still reading this book, but it has helped me out a lot already in the PHP arena. The book has great examples, quizzes and activities to make sure that you are getting the point of each hour (chapter). The only bad thing I can say is that the book does have some minor layout problems, but you can just over look those. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone wanting to start scripting in PHP. **Side note - the book covers Unix based installs of PHP4. If you want to install PHP4, MySQL and Apache on your Windows machine go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/phptriad/ and download their install program.
Rating:
Summary: Inconveniences and Errors, but still a Good Book
Review: Most technical books have web sites provide their examples for downloading. This book has a lot of useful examples, but compels the reader to type nearly all of them. The SAMS website has only two chapters worth of examples. There are well more than 20 chapters in the book. If SAMS really wants this to be a book that can be done in 24 1-hour sessions, then they are to be faulted for not making sure all of the examples are available to the reader in electronic format. One complete section was technically incorrect. The book explains that the isset() function can be used to determine if a given page is being parsed as a POST or a GET page. The author incorrectly says that the variable $HTTP_POST_VARS is only set when handling a POST page. In fact, on my Apache 1.3.17 server (the current version), this variable is also set on GET pages. So, this book has inconveniences and some errors. But most of it is good and the examples provided help tremendously.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but could be better
Review: PLUSES The book is very well organized in 24 chapters that are supposed to take roughly one hour each to cover. While the earlier chapters take no more than 20 minutes or so, the later ones may take a little more than one hour if you actually intend to "digest" their contents. On average, I guess it takes you about an hour per chapter. The coverage of PHP also seems to be quite good (although I am not an advanced programmer and therefore cannot not be totally sure about that). I can't think of anything I might one day like to do with PHP that I didn't find somewhere in the book. True enough, locating this information is not always very easy, but with a little effort you'll end up finding it. Finally, the layout is not only appealing but also makes the book easy to use. MINUSES The blurb on the back cover is a bit too ambitious: it promises you'll "learn how to ... setup a secure PHP environment ... create dynamic charts and graphics on your web pages ... create dynamic web applications using PHP." Well, I guess you might if you read the book four or five times and spent lots of time studying each chapter. Otherwise, I don't think you'll be going quite so far. While the author writes clearly enough, he sometimes uses a string of technical terms that you're supposed to have memorized. Problem is, sometimes you don't remember them all, and if the context doesn't help, you get lost. Take this sentence as an example: "When you pass arguments to functions they are stored as copies in parameter variables." I had to go back to several different pages to remind myself what the difference between "parameters" and "arguments" was, and also what the heck "parameter variables" was supposed to mean. I think sometimes the author assumes that you'll remember every single new term that is introduced, and he'll be using them to introduce yet another new term in a couple of pages. For programmers with some previous experience that may be okay, but not for novices like me. Some of the explanations of important new concepts are just barely mentioned in the text and then actually introduced in an example. However, most of the examples consist of a chunk of code without any mention as to what this code will output to the browser or file or whatever, so you just have to guess what will come out as a result. Now, if you're still trying to understand what a particular chunk of code will do, it would help to see what it would result in. More screenshots of code output to a browser, for example, would have helped a lot. There are also quite a few misprints: double closing parentheses where there should only be one, misplaced line numbers in the middle of the code, etc. Misprints in text are not so serious, because you understand the "code" (i.e. the language) well enough that you can make sense out of it. But misprints in the PHP code that you're trying to learn can be very confusing. All of a sudden you find this "10:" in the middle of a line of code, and by the time you've figured out that it's the number of the next line that has somehow wound up in the middle of the previous line, you've wasted ten minutes of your time.
Rating:
Summary: So Far So Good
Review: Some areas of the book could use a little better explanation. I guess this is as good as it gets for a first book on a programming language.
Rating:
Summary: Best Programming Book I Own
Review: Teach Yourself PHP4 in 24 Hours is without a doubt the best programming book about any computer language that I own. The book assumes no previous knowledge of programming but does not waste a lot of time describing the basics, instead spending most of the early chapters telling how to use all the basics. The book covers most of the big aspects of PHP, with plenty of great little code snippets that have been invaluable in writing programs. The only thing I could wish for in this book would have been more function descriptions, but for that, I can just go to php.net. This book manages to cover all of the most important functions PHP has to offer, and how to use them effectively. If you're getting started on PHP, this book is a must-own.
Rating:
Summary: Good book spoiled by typos
Review: The topics here are explained in plain English and are easy to follow. All the basics of PHP4 are covered along with some more advanced topics towards the back. My main gripe with the book is all the type errors. Do 'Sams' test these books out on anyone before publishing? When learning a new language or just taking those first steps, typos are a real hinderence and I wasted lots of time figuring out what they were, although it could be argued that I gained experience at de-bugging! Worth the asking price but you'll still need another book to go at.
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