Upgrading to PHP 5

Rating:
Summary: Awsome refference tool.
Review: A very good choice. PHP5 is a new wave in dynamic web development. It dramaticly improved the handeling of classes and objects. This little book is your quick and easy to use refference of objects, methods, variables, scopes, functions. At Procreative Designs (procreative.ca), the company I work for this one was distributed all over our web development department at the beginning of last month. I personally find this book really handy and useful. Previously I owned PHP4 Refference and it always served me well. Overall its a great choice for quick refference.

Rating:
Summary: Exactly what I needed
Review: Being fairly proficient on PHP 4 but looking for more info on version 5, the idea of getting books on PHP 5 that, once again, starts from scratch wasn't exciting at all. This book instead was exactly what I needed, it assume you know PHP 4 and covers only the new features with a good amount of details and a bunch of useful suggestions for code migration. The only reason I don't give it 5 stars is that in the chapters covering OOP and DOM the author try to explain the new functionalities but also attempt to throw in the mix more generic info on this two topics. The end results are somewhat mixed, the coverage of PHP 5 is, in my opinion, very good, but the material about OOP and DOM instead aren't up to the rest and does more harm than good.

Rating:
Summary: Must have for old PHP4 users that think they know everything
Review: I've been scripting PHP since PHP3. It was a good wakeup call to let me know I might not know everything about PHP anymore. Sessions were a cool new thing in PHP4, then superglobals in 4.1, and both were easy to understand and implement, but I couldn't seem to find a decent explaination of what was coming up in PHP5 and how to use it since there isn't a lot of code to read as examples (as of this writing). This was the answer for me. The book has 10 chapters; I got my money's worth after I finished chapter 2.

This book takes a seasoned PHP4 programmer and shows how PHP5 adds new features that reduce clunkyness that you just had to live with in PHP4. I can't even think how many different implementations I've seen of preventing SQL injections for MySQL queries. 4 pages explained how the MySQLi extension wiped out one of my complete MySQL classes that exists for nothing other than SQL injection and error handling. Albeit if I read the php.net manual, I could have figured some of it out on my own, but not with the helpful notes that Adam includes.

You should get this book if you write PHP4 classes, use MySQL <= 4.0.x, or you're thinking about switching to SQLite because you're weary about future support of MySQL in PHP and all the licensing changes from MySQL AB. I don't much like XML, so I skipped that chapter. I don't have any applications where I could use the streams, SOAP, Tidy, or Reflection functionality, so I can't speak on those either cause I skipped them, too.

Even though I didn't read half the book, the other half was worth it anyway.

Rating:
Summary: Awesome Book for PHP4 Developers!
Review: This is a fantastic book. I frequently find that when an existing developer buys a book, he/she has to sort through all the garbage review in the beginning. This book assumes you are a competent PHP4 programmer. Then it takes you step by step through new PHP5 syntax and features that are unique to PHP5. It reviews and explains Object Oriented Programming (OOP), then discusses a variety of PHP5-only concepts, like SimpleXML and SQLite.

I recently installed a PHP5 server and this book has been by my side since. All PHP4 developers who expect to use PHP5 within the next year or so should really have a copy of this book handy.