Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL E-Commerce: From Novice to Professional

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Choice For learing PHP /MySQL Ecommerce
Review: Although I have not had a lot of experience with PHP and MySQL, This book was quite surprising. The authors made everything
very straight forward and easy to follow as far as getting a site up and running quickly. For the faint of heart, they also
provide a link to XAMPP which provides an installer for everything such as Apache, PHP and all the other things you need to
get up and running without messing around, which is a definate timesaver. I use Windows xp and XAMPP installed everything I
needed for this project in about 1 minute or less and the PEAR and Smarty modules were equally as fast.

Beginning PHP5 and mySQL E-Commerce is a great way for people interested in Open Source technologies to see exactly how
powerful and customizable their website can be without being too costly to create and / or operate. If you're looking to
build an ECommece site quickly and easily, as well as having something scalable that can be easily customized, this is
definately the book for you. The text and examples are easy to follow and you don't have to be a programmer in order to
accomplish the exercises in the book. Definately a good buy, you'll be glad you did it.

Rating:
Summary: Got a fish and learned how to fish
Review: Before I buy a program book, I always to read the book to see if it meets my two basic requirements: one is writing style. It should be written in clear and plain English and well organized. The another is more, clear explanation of "How it works", not only just put all the codes and without or with only little bit explanation. Cristian Darie's books always are one of my top choices. I recommend that you read CHAPTER 8, The Shopping Basket and CHAPTER 11, Customer Details. It lists all methods, dig more detail and offer "Do it yourself". Finally, you Got a Fish and Learned How to Fish!!!


Rating:
Summary: THE BOOK the industry doesn't want you to have! Darie Rocks!
Review: I have bought numerous programming books in the past and have always wanted a thorough book that covers detailed development of an e-Commerce website. I've bought several that claim to be indepth in this area but they have all fallen short of being what I was looking for. I've never bought a book without reading the reviews on it first....but this book was so new when I bought it that there were no reviews available for it. It sounded like it contained what I was looking for so I took a chance and bought it. I'm really glad I took that chance! "Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL E-Commerce: From Novice to Professional" is THE ABSOLUTE BEST BOOK available that details, step-by-step, how to build a full-fledge e-Commerce website...and believe me, I have bought every PHP/MySQL book (plus many more) that can't hold up to their claims....but this book delivers what the others can't. This is truly a ONE OF A KIND book.

Firstly, this books covers the ins and outs of installing PHP, PEAR, MySQL, and Apache on your Unix based machine (installations for Windows systems are also covered).

Secondly, the book shows you detailed code that performs different functions and then explains step-by-step what each bit of the code is doing.

Plus, this is THE ONLY book that will show you how to do database queries that return images from a product catalog and lay out the images with a description and link to a product page. The other PHP / MySQL books only go as far as showing you how to build a page header and footer with text only query results.

Also, the book helps you set up your site for future expansion. It uses Smarty Templating for page layouts so that your site is easy to modify and maintain and Darie shows you how to use PEAR DB abstraction to allow for changes in the type of database you might decide to use in the future (ex. , migrating from MySQL to Oracle). That being said, the title of the book is a little misleading in the fact that MySQL is used very little in this book. The book uses PEAR to perform the MySQL functionality.

I have bought books in the past that end up being written hastily with poor writing style and code errors galore. Cristian Darie and Mr. Bucica have taken the time to write a near perfect book. If you don't believe me look at the erata for this book at Apress.com....there are almost no coding errors at all. And, their writing style really makes the book fun to read.

Lastly, and definitely worth mentioning, I ran into a PHP problem that I couldn't solve. Cristian Darie listed his website and e-mail address in the front of this book and I thought I'd try e-mailing him to help me. I didn't expect to receive a reply, especially since having e-mailed other authors in the past with no reply. Within three hours Cristian Darie had replied to my e-mail with the solution to my problem. He was very nice and polite and even offered his help if I ran into future problems as I was working through the book! This is absolutely amazing and UNPARALLELED CUSTOMER SUPPORT.

If you want to know how to develop your site the right way and learn a lot in the process, then this is the book for you!

Rating:
Summary: where the rubber meets the road ... getting it DONE
Review: On a scale of 1 to 5 stars, this book is a ***** 10 *****

I can't remember a programming book, that I thought warranted more than 4 stars. It seems that there's always some shortcoming (often irritating e.g. most authors rarely bother to comment code and most publishers seem to lack ink to BOLD what's being illustrated). This book is replete with commented, SUCCINCT code snippets, cleverly laced together ... as it builds and builds toward ever more sophisticated and feature-rich implementations. WELL-conceived organization and layout.

Want to learn how to do cross-selling recommendations? Jump into chapter 10; in just 8 pages you'll have it knocked. No need to read preceeding chapters (though you should); it's so clearly presented that you can hop around chapters and use it as a commercial implementation(s) reference book.

In fact, I can't remember a programming book, that I bought without, FIRST, reading reviews. Since the subject matter is so vitally important (unless you're backlogged with string-parsing projects <G> ), I gambled ... and pre-ordered this - before release date. Boy, oh boy, did I WIN on THAT gamble!

This is about the sixth PHP book (based on those best recommendations) I've gone through, since spring; so, it's not like I'm not intensely aware of what else is out there. I'm amazed at how many critical commercial topics they've crammed into this book. I can't remember a programming book where the writing flowed so smoothly, briefly introducing and framing the examples ... a programming book that's EASY to read? Am I dreaming? The editors really earned their keep on this one! EVERY computer book publisher ought to examine this one - closely; this sets the bar for presentation, brevity and clarity.

Any LAMP person who doesn't get this book, just "doesn't get it"! If Santa doesn't leave a copy of this under the tree of any LAMP person in the world, then that person must have been VERY BAD, indeed! <G>

My hat's off to the authors - for in-depth knowledge of the subject(s), artful presentation, organization and skill at teaching your craft. You are TRULY "world class"!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent E -Commerce Book for programmer
Review: The author Cristian Darie comes to my attention due to the best seller book "Beginning Asp.net 1.1 E -Commerce". I was looking for books to guide me though some asp.net web project in depth, and at a professional approach. I searched the Internet, and almost all forums unanimously agreed that the book be on the top. I made the purchase after only 30 minutes on the internet. I thanks those authors for their ambition to write the best. This makes our life easier.

Cristian Darie has the talent to speak the word that makes sense. He has a preemptive writing style, every word he write targets at the readers. When reading his book, I do not have much pain as normally would. Instead, I enjoyed. I found E -Commerce is a field the author is so familiar with, in fact, he deals with the subjects skillfully.

Another reason why Cristian Darie writes the most popular programming books, is he chose a very specific area in which he has solid skills and experience, and he targets at general public. From "building Web Site with Asp.net Community Start Kit", to "The programmer's Guide to SQL", to "Beginning Asp.net 1.1 E -Commerce", to now "Beginning PHP5 and MySQL e-Commerce". He wrote the books progressively, consistent with his accumulative experience.

The new book "beginning PHP5 and MySQL e-Commerce", has a similar structure as its Asp.net version. But Cristian Darie, add two more chapters to make PHP counterpart even more appealing. Chapter 15 adds a product review system to the e-commerce site. Chapter 16 integrate Amazon Web services to the web site, so make it possible to sell Amazon products through the web site. Cristian Darie thinks about value, and he is watching the industry closely.



Rating:
Summary: Everything you need to know to build an E-commerce site
Review: The use of PHP 5 and MySQL for e-commerce is a tested and proven combination. This book is primarily intended for the reader who already has some PHP knowledge and needs to understand how to build an e-commerce site. It does not focus on teaching either PHP 5 or MySQL but instead focuses on how to use the combination to produce an exceptional e-commerce solution.

The authors use the example of a Tshirt shop and walk the reader through every step of completely constructing a viable e-commerce site. The book covers everything from designing your site, to creating a product catalog, searching the catalog, receiving payments, catalog administration, creating a shopping basket, working with customer orders, product recommendations, storing customer information, secure connections, implementing the order pipeline, working with credit cards, and setting up product reviews.

The appendixes include detailed information on installing Apache, PHP, MySQL, and phpAdmin (for both Windows and Unix-like systems), hosting your web site, and project management.

While this is not a book about learning the PHP scripting language it does contain enough detailed code to create a functioning e-commerce site even if you don't understand how the code works. For example, on page 192 it says to "Create a new template file named admin_login.tpl in the templates folder and add the following code to it:..." This is followed by a long code listing that produces the desired results. There is a short explanation of the function of various sections of the code but nothing that details the purpose of each command, variable, etc. This is really not a problem since they state up front that the target audience is a PHP programmer who needs to learn how to build an e-commerce site, but it does deserve mention for those who have no knowledge of PHP and are considering the book.

The first thing a person might notice when thinking about purchasing this book is that there is no CD in the back containing all the many examples of source code. This could be very discouraging as the examples are extensive and rewriting them by hand without error can be a daunting task. However, Apress does make all of the examples available for download at their web site.

Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL E-Commerce is highly recommended for anyone who has some basic knowledge of PHP and MySQL and wants to capitalize on this to build a powerful e-commerce site.

Rating:
Summary: This could easily be the programming book of 2004
Review: This book is one of the best books I have ever read about PHP and MySQL. The examples are great and the way the author shows you step by step how to create a complete E-commerce site is so simple than even someone like me with little knowledge of PHP was able to follow the book with not problems. In this book you will learn a lot of information than other books about PHP will not give you.
The examples work and the final product is an actual site that with little modification you can customized for you or for one of your clients.

I always wanted to know how to incorporate paypal as the payment method and this books shows you exactly what you need to know. There is so much good stuff in this book than I going to just tell you this, YOU MUST BUY THIS BOOK if you are serious about PHP and MySQL e-commerce programming.

The book is well written, clear, and easy to follow. The final project is a real life example of an ecommerce site. I would recommend this book to any one trying to create an ecommerce site using PHP and MySQL. The only problem is that I can only give it a 5 out of 5 stars, but I believe it should be 5+ stars, a GREAT BOOK TO HAVE!!


Rating:
Summary: Very hands on
Review: Why has the combination of PHP and MySQL proved so popular in the marketplace? Darie and Bucica offer an explanation in the form of what is essentially a protracted and detailed build out of an e-commerce website. The ostensible reason is a shop selling T shirts. So we have a product catalog, which they subdivide into various departments, and in each of which, there is more detail.

This drives the design of a database and the explanation of how to express this in MySQL. But all this in the back end. Users who visit the website could not care less about such details. Instead, they want to see pages of T shirts. So we learn how PHP can make dynamical pages, taking the data from the MySQL database. Finally, a shopping cart is implemented to let users buy items.

The discussion is detailed enough to get functional code. And, of course, you can try your hand at modifying this for your needs. Not much theory in this book. Very hands on.