Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL: From Novice to Professional offers a comprehensive introduction to two of the most popular open source technologies on the planet: the PHP scripting language and the MySQL database server. You are not only exposed to the core features of both technologies, but will also gain valuable insight into how they are used in unison to create dynamic data-driven web applications, not to mention learn about many of the undocumented features of the most recent versions.

The first part of the book is devoted to PHP’s foundational features, with special focus on those new to PHP 5, including the improved object-oriented support, exception handling, SQLite support, SimpleXML, and much more. But PHP 5-specific topics are only part of what’s covered; you’ll also learn about the language’s core capabilities, beginning with a survey of installation and configuration tasks. Early chapters are devoted to basic PHP programming concepts such as variables, datatypes, arrays, string manipulation, and user interaction. Later chapters cover session handling, LDAP integration, the Smarty templating engine, and Web Services support.

Next up is a broad overview of the powerful MySQL database server. Among other topics, you’ll learn about the installation and configuration process, datatypes, key security features, and various administration utilities. With this groundwork in pace, you’ll then learn about PHP’s assortment of MySQL functions, accompanied by dozens of examples depicting the creation and execution of queries. You’ll also learn how to perform searches, and manage database transactions.

Whether you’re a newcomer searching for a thorough introduction to these popular technologies, or a seasoned developer in need of a comprehensive reference, this book is for you.

Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL: From Novice to Professional, offers a comprehensive introduction to two of the most popular web application building technologies on the planet: the scripting language PHP and the MySQL database server. Readers are not only exposed to the core aspects of both technologies, but also gain valuable insight into how they are used in unison to create dynamic data-driven web applications. It is the first book to delve into the features of the latest releases of the world’s most popular open source web development technologies, the MySQL 4 database server and PHP 4 scripting language. Not only will readers profit from extensive introductions to the core features of each technology, but also from insight into the cutting-edge, sometimes undocumented features of the most recent versions.

Beginning PHP 5 and MYSQL: From Novice to Professional offers a comprehensive introduction to two of the most popular Web application building technologies on the planet: the scripting language PHP and the MySQL database server. This book will not only expose you to the core aspects of both technologies, but will provide valuable insight into how they are used in unison to create dynamic data-driven Web applications.

Beginning PHP 5 and MYSQL explains the new features of the latest releases of the world’s most popular Open Source Web development technologies: MySQL 4 database server and PHP 5 scripting language. This book explores the benefits, extensive new features, and advantages of the object-oriented PHP 5, and how it can be used in conjunction with MySQL 4 to create powerful dynamic Web sites.

This is the perfect book for the Web designer, programmer, hobbyist, or novice that wants to learn how to create applications with PHP 5 and MySQL 4, and is a great entrance point for Apress’s extensive spectrum of PHP books planned for 2004.

Just a reference book
Hello there,

I begin learning PHP in 2003. I havn’t progressed much since then. I learned the basics of PHP from "PHP and MySQL Web Development" by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson. I know how to interact with the database, create sessions, I can even go furder if I’m interested and I read some tutorials over the internet, however I wanted to have a book that I can read in bed.

So I took this book based on reviews and because it also covers a bit of PHP6 All I wanted is to remind me on some stuff I read some time ago and learn some new things, tactics I could use.

So I started to read. I rememberd some old stuff about Arrays, Strings. I still can’t get OOP but I havn’t tried to much. Now I will defenetly use PEAR because the examples in the book weare helpful, HOWEVER...

As other people say, this book is more as a reference book. I didn’t got so much information. I’m on chapter 21. I will soon start to read about MySQL and I can’t really say I have learned something. Yes, I know some things but still, this isn’t good for a beginner.

The book "PHP and MySQL Web Development" starts MySQL in chapter 2. This means you start from the begining on actualy doing someting useful. Here you just read chapters after chapters but you don’t actualy have good examples. Yes, you have examples and how to use some functions but no big examples.

I first got my disapointment when I was on SESSION HADLING chapter where I really wanted to see some COOKIE examples. All I found was some COOKIE FUNCTIONS and some explinations that I could have got from PHP Manual. From PHP Manual I could have even found some examples, here nothign. Then I found some simple details about $_SESSION. TO little covered in this important chapter.

Then I finally got it. All this book does it present to you some functions. Explain them. You see a small example and you move on.

No actualy practice! I really wanted a BIG BOOK from where I can learn more stuff.

[Third Edition Review] Broad coverage except in XML manipulation
This books is written for someone who is familiar with other programming languages and databases and now wants to use PHP and MySQL. It is not written for somebody completely new to programming. For example, if you came from Perl or ASP, and you wanted to know how arrays, loops, and objects in PHP, this book will cover that.

The topic coverage is broad but not deep. The book has a feel of "semi-reference" in that each topic stands on its own. This is not a cookbook or "learn by example" book. There is enough information to get you started, but if you have a complex/niche problem, this book will not help you. For more information, you will have to consult books that specialize on the topic you are interested.

I have one major gripe with this book. There is not any significant coverage of XML manipulation or XSL/XSLT aspects of PHP. When you look at the table of contents or index, there is no mention of XSL/XSLT and only a brief mention of XML (and RSS) in the Web Services chapter. For a book that covers a lot of subjects, this is a weak area.

Not for beginning programmers
This book does have a lot of information, making it a great reference book. However, after 10 chapters I still do not know how to use any of the information to "build dynamic, database-driven web sites..." as the subtitle states. If you’re a beginning programmer, as I am, try to find a true beginner’s book (wish I could give a recommendation).

Great book on PHP and MySQL
I have recently bought this book and have to say it is execellent, it does help if you have a little prior knowledge as some new readers could find it a little difficult to understand. But if you have an interest in PHP and MySQL it is a great book to get your hands on. I highly recommend it.

Not for the novice!
Despite the title, this book is not for the novice. Even the introductory first 100 pages or so assume that you are above a novice level. The examples lead to more questions (for me, the novice) than they answer.

Having said that, this book has a tremendous amount of information in it and, as other reviews mention, it will work well as a reference. Now, I hope to find a true beginning PHP book to provide the basis to use this book!

This was my first PHP/MySQL book
I purchased this book because I needed to use PHP and MySQL for a project at work. I never had any exposure to either before reading this book. By using this book and the w3schools website I was able to successful build a meager database and have a fully functioning php front end. It was very pleasing to see the project come to fruition and I have this book to thank for that. I used it mainly as a reference book. For example, I knew exactly what I wanted to do so I would search this book for an example of that and adapt the code to my situation. I didn’t use this book to "learn PHP." I think you need to have a project to do in order to best use this book.

The Ultimate Bible for Web Programming!
First off let me address a common review, that the book is too advanced for beginners. Plain and simple, it is not beginning programming, it’s beginning PHP and MySQL. To even know what these applications are, you should have some programming background anyhow.

That said, even if you don’t have any prior experience, the book does a great job of introducing you to the key concepts, and is flooded with examples, the best way to learn.

This book has become my programming bible, but it maintains a great balance. It has everything you could ever wish to look up later (and you will), but still follows a nice rhetoric and flow for someone looking for a tutorial-esque book. Some of the examples he wrote are key frameworks in my website! I actually used his book as my main source to build my website from the ground up. Even if it doesn’t have something, it arms you with enough knowledge to know the right questions to ask. Which leads me to the greatest part of all... he backs his product!

I battled a bug for over 4 months that I was unable to solve from searching anywhere on the Internet. It’s then I remembered that he listed his E-Mail address in the book and challenged readers to contact him if they needed help! Not expecting a response, I was shocked when he speedily replied that day, and solved my problem finally to boot!

To sum up: Not necessarily for beginners period, great for programmers beginning PHP and MySQL, the only book you should have to buy, and a very supportive author.

Great amount of depth, not so much context
This is a great reference book. It delves very deep into both PHP and MySQL. One thing I found lacking was some context. Practical examples so that I can see what I’ve learned being implemented in real world applications.

Other books that do not get so deep often include these types of exercises and I find them extremely helpful to gain a true understanding of the material.

In my opinion, if this book included excerises, case studies, etc.. it would be perfect.

Definitive text on the subject
There are a good many texts on this subject, but not definitive like this one. A lot of technical writers have a tendency to get so bogged down with details they leave the readers behind and frustrated. What Jason does is present the material in a fresh and CONCISE fashion. He doesn’t spend paragraph after paragraph beating a subject to death or flinging out stale descriptors; he simply breaks it down into the basic components and tags on "nuggets of wisdom" that help you avoid pitfalls as he builds on the material. Right from the beginning, he engages us with the why and what of programming PHP against a MySQL backend, and then he’s off and running. No long-winded chapters, just straightforward information. This is what all technical books should strive to achieve.

Not good, Not Bad.
it’s thick really. And can’t blame the accuracy as technology changes . There are errors i found , and couldn’t resolve. If only he has a support forum , it’ll be better . This book expects you to have some knowledge in PHP. And like some say, it’s implementation to a website and turorial is little or near to zero.Should include more samples of cases. you have to figure out your own. it’s more like a textbook than a self-learn book. It’s good for reference. I suggest who is really new ,in PHP - look for other that is easier to read ,and more novice-like.This book should help in your advance to professional stage.

Probably not your best option
I bought this book because I need a more advanced book on PHP/MySQL - specifically in the use of mysqli, PDO and stored procedures. I found this book to be quite lacking in these areas. I have the MySQL Stored Procedure Programming book by Oreilly and it covers these subjects in better detail but even it doesn’t go as in-depth as I would like.

I think there is some good material in this book but it didn’t satisfy my immediate need and for that I am disappointed.

Hit or miss
Some sections of this book have been very helpful, while others seem to have been slapped together for "completeness" but without much thought or care. For example the section on session handling I thought was quite good. The section covering the newer object based MySQL interface was hard to understand and lacked enough information to do anything beyond the very basic example given. Then again most books on the shelves right now don’t cover it at all.

I found numerous errors in the examples, but that seems to be standard fare for most rushed-to-print books of this type. A larger problem is that the text is often unclear, and the examples don’t do a good job of helping. Also where there are multiple approaches given to a problem the examples seem to stick to one approach and other approaches, while mentioned, are not shown.

It’s easy to accept these shortcomings as it seems to be the norm for this type of book, except that after spending some time looking through other books on the subject I did find one that does a much better job on all fronts. No surprise it’s an O’Reilly release - "Web Database Applications with PHP and MySQL 2nd Edition."

As to whether I’d recommend this book...not as a sole source of information. It does have some good sections that are worth having access to, but trying to use it by itself to learn with and as a reference has been an exercise in frustration.

good book
is a good book for reference, if you already have programimng knowledge is great, it has a lot of information so you can skip some parts, if you are new to php you have to read it from the start.
it was a good buy

Definitely not for begginers
I never got around to finishing this book because halfway through it I noticed I had not even written a single line of code.The author does not propose any excercises for you to try out what your learned through the book.All he does is list all the functions available in PHP but no examples on how to use them.
I can see this book being useful as a reference after you have programmed PHP for a while, but for beginners that want to get started in PHP for the very firt time I would not recommend it.

Far too many typos, syntax errors, and gaps in explinations
I bought this book on recommendation. I have a background in programming, and I just needed a book to cement together all the concepts I had picked up in developing PHP apps. Less then 2 chapters in the errors became so frequent in the code that the author no longer holds my confidence. Its hard to be confident of his explanation if it lacks the care to make sure its correct.

The writing and explanations, though following a clear format, are at times wildly inconstant in explaining the parts of various functions. Do not recommend.

Full of value
I haven’t programmed in almost 10 years, but wanted to jump into PHP and MySQL generated web content. I was able to pick and chose throughout this book to bring myself up to speed and have a functional website in a matter of 2 weeks. I was easily able to adapt examples in the book to fit my needs.

This book was really worth the money. I will be referencing to it for a long time to come.

Great reference for all
I am a semi-experienced programmer, majoring in CS and currently in my third year. I needed to buy a book to learn PHP for a job and originally went for O’Reilley’s _Learning PHP and MySQL_. I quickly realized that was a bad choice, however, because it was way too simple and short and didn’t really cover SQL at all. Even as a reference book it just did not suffice compared to Gilmore’s _PHP5 and MySQL_ which I borrowed from a friend. PHP and MySQL is covered in great depth, and a thorough index makes this nearly-exhaustive text a great reference book.

**This is likely not a book for someone who has never programmed before** as it uses typical programming language terminology without previous definition. Still, abundant examples and side notes allows anyone with reasonable programming experience to breeze through the book. Reading this cover-to-cover would definitely not be the correct approach, but skimming over the chapters and getting acquainted with the PHP language is something this book makes easy to do when you can simply slow down and go over the examples when you feel you need to, or quickly reach the next section thanks to good organization and text formatting.

If you are looking for a reference book for PHP and MySQL just short of a bible, this is definitely for you. But if you are a complete novice to programming, you would probably be better off coming back to this later or buying it on the side for once you have more experience.

Great starter guide
this guide speaks in laymens terms and teached using simple examples. I would recomend this book for grandmothers and professional web admins collections

Excellent Standalone Learning Material!
I recently purchased "Beginning PHP & MySQL: From Novice to Professional" to
help me in my summer project of expanding my knowledge of web design. As it
turns out, the book has been more than a help! It’s practically all I’ve
needed.

Excellent Standalone Learning Material!
I recently purchased "Beginning PHP & MySQL: From Novice to Professional" to
help me in my summer project of expanding my knowledge of web design. As it
turns out, the book has been more than a help! It’s practically all I’ve
needed.

Excellent Book
Only through the beginning of this book, but so far so good. Excellent explanations and the other reviewers are on the money when they say that this is a good book. Highly recommended.

Not for novice...
This book shouldn’t be advertised as "from novice to professional", since it start assuming that you have pretty complex knowledge of C++, HTML, etc. The book doesn’t even have an ordered structure: when you are in the first chapters, it start using functions that will be explained later, just as if you should know them before.

Sometimes very complex, other times it just seems like a big appendix of functions descriptions instead as a guide to use them in real program environment.

After reading the whole book, and having it at sight, I tried to create a simple program and it was just impossible, because I learned useless and too complex functions but I couldn’t make the simplest program without looking for help at php forums.

It may be a good option for not-novice, but if you’re looking for a novice book, DON’T buy this book.

Great Book
I really enjoyed reading through the book. It’s not only good for someone just learning PHP, but it serves as a great reference material as well. I’d highly recommend this book to anyone getting started with PHP.

Excellent book for those new to PHP and MySQL
First, let me say this book DOES NOT teach programming. So, if you are unfamiliar with general programming constructs and how they work, this book may not be for you.

This is my first book on PHP and MySQL. I have read many other books ranging from simple web development to game programming with OpenGL and C++. For anyone with some understanding of programming this is an excellent book. It is one of the easiest reads for a technical book that one can find.

The book is full of short examples. The book does not unnecessarily spend a long time on particular commands and gets straight to the point. For example, the chapter on arrays does not go over what an array is and how it operates, but discusses a huge plethora of array functions. This makes the book a great reference, as the chapters are independent and well organized. This also means the 913 pages are packed with a wealth of information; especially since, there is not an appendix.

The author is also very approachable, and he has responded to my e-mail. He also has a new site for the book that I recommend you visit before making your decision. [...]
This book is definitely a good choice if you are looking for a book to learn PHP and use it with the MySQL database.

Outstanding guide for experienced programmers
I found this to be a very helpful guide in getting into the intense details of configuration, performance tuning and eventually programming PHP web applications. It spends a lot of time on the settings and config, and eventually gets into data access and DB progrmaming. if you’re moving over from another platform (like I did), you’ll find this very helpful.

I’m a PHP beginner
I picked up about three different books on the subject, and this one was by far the best. It moved at a fairly rapid pace, but each example was explained fairly thoroughly. The past couple of years I haven’t had much luck with computer books; some were either a little too slow (PHP Visual Blueprint-- but at least the examples worked) and/or extremely sloppy (Designing with Javascript from O’Reilly is a prime example-- demo files from the website either didn’t work or were missing entirely-- and the errata page didn’t even begin to address these problems) or presented haphazardly (Elizabeth Castro’s Peachpit book on Perl). I was really glad to find this book when I did. I was about to give up on computers entirely and turn to some disreputable vocation like war profiteering.

Fairly well written, but needs work
I’m a semi-newbie when it comes to PHP. I’ve done some simple PHP previously, and for a project at work I needed to ramp up my knowledge of using PHP together with MySQL. Due to the ratings for this book, I ordered it.

It’s fairly well written, but the code snippets themselves occasionally have syntax errors. This extends to the source code that you can download from their site. I can understand syntax or other errors in a book, but I can’t forgive errors in a file that is easy to update online. In fact, it got so bad that I had to look online through some tutorials to get the syntax correct for my project, defeating the purpose of me purchasing this book.

While providing a solid understanding (If somewhat terse at times) of the workings and background of both software packages, error checking needs to come into play.

Very good resource
I bought this book because I had a project that required me to set up a dynamic website driven by MySQL and PHP. Using what I learned in the book and a few free online tutorials I was able to finish the project 1 month early.

This book assumes some prior programming experience, so if you’ve never programmed getting an intro to programming book would be a good idea first. There are many examples of code in the book which cover many things you might like to do with a website driven by these two technologies. Not a terribly difficult read with lots of info.

Frustrating
I’m not new to programming or web programming, but I was new to PHP. This book is much better as a reference than an intro to PHP, however, even there it has its limitations.

I bought this book, read the first 5 chapters (130 pages), and then stopped reading it because I was learning too slowly (ie, reading too many pages and picking up too little usability). As an introductory text, I would rather this book moved at a greater breadth but less depth -- it goes through dozens of specific functions, making it feel like a dictionary. There is also little attention brought to the functions you will be using soon over the ones you will not use for awhile yet. In that sense, it was very frustrating to spend a lot of time reading several chapters and still not feeling like I was getting anywhere or able to use much of the power of PHP.

In my frustration, I decided to revisit w3schools . com, and I found their tutorial immensely useful as an introduction to both PHP and MySQL (I needed both and I needed them quickly). That choice allowed me to start writing some PHP code within an hour and start working with databases quickly as well (nothing is mentioned about MySQL until Chapter 24 of this book).

So now, instead of use this PHP/MySQL book as a learning tool, I use it as a reference. The index isn’t ideal*, so it still isn’t a great reference, and the MySQL layout has not been helpful. I will be buying some PHP cookbooks to get a better feel for the capabilities of PHP and how to use its functions properly, and I will report back in this review after I find a better reference to recommend over this one (hopefully by mid-January).
*The index is HUGE, but I still have a difficult time finding things I need since I look for a lay-word over the word that is listed. If I already knew the word that is listed in the index, I may not even need to look in the index.

This book was written for new programmers that want a programming introduction to PHP and was not written for web programmers new to PHP. Although I program, I want features of a web programming book when I buy a web programming book.

What I consider a feature of a (good) web programming book: Chapters are split into a quick intro to the most commonly used fuctions of the chapter’s topic (5-10 pages) and a longer part for use as a reference (15-20 pages). The book’s format has good eye catching sections so readers do not waste time finding what is important if we just want to skim things so we can get into doing some web programming quickly. Commonly used functions are not buried in a bunch of uncommonly used functions.

excellent coverage of essential ’need to know’
Although the title says ’From Novice to Professional’ be aware that you won’t go from novice to *expert* with this book. It will, however, bring you to a decent functional level (hence professional). Also, it is true that the book assumes a basic understanding of programming. So if you’re new to programming, get an ’Intro to Programming’ book before or follow some general programming tutorials to bring you up to the basics.

This is a great introductory book to PHP that can as well serve as a reference. It covers many areas, not always in depth, but most times enough to give you some solid bases and get you to actually ’do stuff’. The good thing about this is that at least 95% percent of the stuff covered matter. What that means for you is that you are veered to the right choice of technologies and concepts from the beginning, ready to expand your knowledge in any of the areas.

The book assumes that you want to work with Apache (which you should ;) ) and explains how to set things up in both unix and windows environment. However, even with a book these installations seldom go without problems, so I would strongly recommend to search for a bundle installation like wampserver, xampp or any other that group the 3 applications (apache, mysql, php).

If you’re strong headed like me and like to hurt yourself you can decide to go through the pain and install each individually. The tradeoff is that you have a better understanding of the overall environment. My best advice if you choose this route is to RTFM (read the ’fine’ manuals). My second best advice is Google.

Chapter 1 and 2 will serve you better as reference later on in your journey as you become profecient enough to actually care about tweaking your environment for features and performance.

Once all is installed and working, the book really starts with chapter 3. There’s an extensive coverage of basic language features such as variables, arrays, functions, scope, comments, escapes, selection and repetition structures, etc.

You will gain some solid notions of intermediate level stuff with chapters on file handling, file uploads, session handling, data insertion and retrieval, authentication.

Some chapters bring you to a productive level with more advanced features like object oriented programming, templating (which with OOP offer good precursors to the concepts behind the MVC when you will learn about design patterns in more advanced texts), web services, regular expressions, error handling.

MySQL as well is covered to a workable level, I particularly liked that Jason Gilmore walks you through the creation of a database class to encapsulate your connection and access needs. It well illustrates some of the practical application of OO Programming in the real world. Most serious developers use similar classes in their day to day development.

There are other chapters in the book that may be of interest to some (networking with php, ldap, SQLite).

This is probably not the last php book that you’ll need, but it’s a great first step to prep you for more advanced subjects. Overall for the beginner this is a great bang for the buck.

This book covers plenty territory well, and no problem with excess!
This has been a great book for me. I’ve been using & tweaking PHP applications for a few years, and recently had occasion to build one. The fact that this book could also refresh my MySQL skills peaked my interest.
I was impressed with the nice examples, long enough to show the main idea, yet other reviewers are right, there is not much here in the way of fullout precanned applications.

I like that this book seems to be organized so that rather than just read it from cover to cover you can dive in and learn from any particular section. The examples can can be downloaded from the Apress site. At times, when printed examples left details out it would be nice if those details would be included in the down-loadable examples (.css files are used in the HTML_Table demos, but never shown or down-loadable).

After browsing the MySQL sections I was able to create and manipulate the db I wanted in no time.

This book covers lots of ground, I was impressed with the completeness of PHP topics, including things you might not expect, like Smarty templates and the Data abstraction of PDO.

Contrary to other reviews, this book is still not a complete PHP reference manual, it’s not meant to be. But if you have this book and a link to a PHP reference website you’ll be fine!

This is not a book to learn php, its just a dictionary of functions
If you plan to learn php from this book, i suggest you start looking for another, this is just a dictionary about all terminolgy and commands regards php, but with no excercices!!! well.. there are a few lazy excercises. Its only a description of the methods i mean.. if you are reading about the function echo() you will read something like. "ok, you should use echo in this way "echo "this book sucks", echo is for show you some info on screen, or if you are reading about loops, like for.. "ok. for is for looping! like 1 to 10".. that’s it! now you are an php expert!!!.. if there was a posibility to rate this as -5 i would.

A really good PHP introduction book
First off, this book is completely useless to you if you have do not have adequate OOP programming background. It jumps around different topics and does not really explain why things are arranged a certain way. This book pretty much assumes you have knowledge of either C, C#, Java techniques - which makes PHP extremely easy to understand. If HTML is all you have under your belt, this is probably a terrible book to buy.

Coming from an adequate background, this book introduces plenty of useful features of PHP and offers a good guide for reference and parameters. Since the book is titled PHP and MySQL, it is expected that the reader should know basic SQL syntax to understand how PHP works with a database.

Overall, this is a good starter book on a very broad topic and it has gotten me started on writing my own scripts.

37 Chapters, 3 Books in one, and a must have desktop reference.
This is as it states for the Novice to the Professional and that is completely true.
If you are new to PHP or if you know PHP well this book is for you. Great for beginners
and a reference for the professional to turn to again and again.
The foundation of the web is simple database back ends and interactive web page front ends.
MySQL is an Internet standard back end database and it’s ease of use combined with the power of PHP
make the 2 a great combination to construct web databases easily and powerfully.
Gilmore guides the reader step by step from installation to basic functions, and finally to practical uses
for PHP and MySQL.
But wait a minute, Gilmore adds two more things. He sneaks small chapters in the middle of his book on
SqlLite and PDO. For those thinking that MySQL is a bit too much for their small project then turn to SqLite.
Gilmore explains how to install and use SqLite quickly. If you are a programmer and are familuar with using
Microsoft’s ADO for database connections, then you can turn to PDO (PHP Dataobjects). PDO provides the
power and simplicity to connect to various databases that you may have at your disposal.
One of the great sections in the book is Gilmore’s explanation of how to do Object Orientated Programing
in PHP. Starting with PHP 5 you can harness the power of PHP to deal with you program objectively. Object
Orientated Programming is mentally the way to go as you can plan, organize, and assemble your code logically.
Other chapters of interest include how to effectively use Arrays, Authentication, File Uploads, PHP and LDAP,
Secure PHP, Securing MySQL, Practical Database Queries, and Importing and Exporting data.

If you do any work with PHP at all, be sure to check out this book. It will pay for itself in full.

The only PHP and MYSQL book you’ll need!
This book is geared for three types of readers I believe (a rarity among books). First are people who have no experience in programming or web development whatsoever, the second are people who have worked in other languages whether be on the desktop or the web, the third type are people who already have some basic PHP and/or MYSQL experience and want to further their knowledge into intermediate topics. How can a book accommodate so many types of readers? Well, being slightly over 800 pages helps and also this book is very well written and organized and focuses on all the important topics.

It’s basically split into three parts (even though it does not say it specifically). The first part comprises of basic PHP skills (installing, syntax basics, functions, OOP and regular expressions), the second part are intermediate to advanced topics (PEAR, authentication, networking, web services, SQLite and PDO) and the third part covers the basics and some intermediate topics of MYSQL (installing, data types, MYSQL and mysqli extensions, stored procedures, triggers, views and transactions).

The book basically covers everything you need to know about PHP and MYSQL for most of your needs. Unless your going to be writing large, enterprise applications on a daily basis (most of us will not be), it really is the only book you should need.

If you’re a novice, don’t be scared of the size of the book or how many topics it covers. The author assumes no prior knowledge and starts you from the very beginning with easy to understand examples that step you through everything you need to get going. It covers the latest version of PHP (version 5.1) which includes PDO (PHP Data Objects) which provides a data abstraction layer to help connect to other database other than MYSQL (DB2, SQL Server, ORACLE, etc.) , and built-in functions for database commands.

This is a book I highly recommend and should be in your library if you want to learn PHP and MYSQL effectively.

Developing a little project from scratch is missing
It is a good book, but I was looking for a chapter were the author would developed a simple project (including the teachings of all the other chapters). For the next release, if the author includes more practical examples and -overall- a simple but comprehensive project, the book will deserve 5 stars.

Great bit of technical writing. Very useful
I think everyone knows that computer language books usually lean towards one of two extremes; either 1) the author cuts-and-pastes his doctoral thesis into Adobe, leaving everyone more confused than if they hadn’t read the book at all, or 2) the book is apparently geared towards six-year-olds and the elderly, leaving you with 3 useful pages out of 800. (Also the books that somehow do both by covering basic variables on page 3, and polymorphing classes on page 5).

This book really does a good job of finding the middle ground. The content is extremely useful and it’s well organized. The transitions between sections have a gentle slope, so you can read the book front-to-back, or pick out specific chapters without feeling lost (This will definitely be a reference book for me.) It’s also written with personality, making it (I’m embarrassed to admit) decent late-night reading for the technically obsessed.

When I was researching the book for myself, I noticed some people commented that this book was too advanced to be called a beginner book. I agree with that, but only if you don’t have any previous experience with programming in general. If this is your first time writing code, you should look for a general programming book first (but THEN get this one), but if you have any kind of programming experience, this book is a no-brainer!

Not a good beginning book
I really don’t get the high praise for this book; other than the fact that most of the reviewers have programming experience already. I really think that book is way overated and, despite the claims of the title, is not suited for the beginner or the novice.

This book includes example code snipets about the use of individual functions, but does not have larger projects or exercices demonstrating how to bring things together.

Once I realized this, I thought, "well at least I can use it as a reference." And it does succeed at this to some extent. However, even in this capacity it seems a little shollow. Further, one gets the impression that it is basically a rewording of the existing documentation that is already available with PHP and MySQL.

To give just one example of all the above... Chapter 2 talks about configuration options in the php.ini file - PHP basics aren’t even covered until Chapter3. Anyhow, let me open randomly to one of the excepts from the book and compare it to the .ini file:
-----------
register_long_arrays(On, Off)
Scope: PHP_INI_SYSTEM; Default value: off
This directive determines whether to continue registering the various input arrays (ENVIRONMENT, GET, POST, COOKIE, SYSTEM) using the deprecated syntax, such as HTTP_*_VARS. Disabling this directive is recommended for performance reasons.

-----------
And a cut and paste from the .ini:

Whether or not to register the old-style input arrays, HTTP_GET_VARS and friends. If you’re not using them, it’s recommended to turn them off,for performance reasons.
register_long_arrays = On

-----------

Again, at this put in the book (Chap2) a beginner/novice is still coming to grips with PHP basics (Chap3), let alone Arrays (Chap 5). Even after which, this is cryptic at best. How is this remotely geared towards either the ’beginner’ or the ’novice’?! I could go on and on with examples from all parts of the book.

The sections on MySQL and the integration between it and PHP is thick, but lite. I consider this book mainly a rehash of the vendor documentation and lacking in real tutorials that are often crutial for novices to learn new skills. And, again, i think that the the book is completely mistitled.

Normally, I really like the Apress books; however, in this case I am benefiting much more from Wrox and Sams.

I might have given it a 3... but so many others scored it to high - even those who remarked on some of the same things.

-My 2 cents

Don’t buy it
I guess if you only want to be able to hack together some PHP pages (nothing complicated) this book might help. But if you get confused or something goes wrong, this book will only confuse you more.

For example, almost every sentence in the section on the cast operator is false.

His explanation of format directives is not correct. But once again, the few examples he gives work and if that’s enough for you to hack together a page then good luck. But if something goes wrong, this book will only make things worse.

At one point he says that the echo function "returns 0". Of course, the echo function never returns anything. But even if we understand that he must have meant that it "prints 0" in this case, in the context he does not explain the *rules* behind why the argument he gave to the echo function would have the value 0.

This is typical of the book. He will explain things incorrectly, or incompletely then give a few (very few) working examples.

With the understanding obtained from this book, I don’t doubt that you could hack together some decent pages, but I wouldn’t trust code written by someone with such a poor understanding of the language.

I believe that a person should go to college and learn about programming languages (not just take a course, but *learn*) before presuming to write a book about one. And I hope you will do yourself a favor and buy a PHP book written by someone who understands programming languages... in other words, not this book.

Couldn’t find a better book
Had a few bumps with the installation, actuall contacted the author through email and he took the time to help and point me in the right direction. A very knowledgable man and wrote an excellent book!! Would recommend this to anyone looking to get started in PHP!

Excellent learning tool
I have a background in Visual Basic which definitely helped. The Chapter about setting up the Linux server I just skipped over but the rest of the book has been very good so far. I would recommend this book to anyone who has some programming experience (any, really) and would like to get into web database programming.

It will also be valuable as a reference later on.

Great Book
I was a beginer at PHP and MySql when I bought this book. Now I feel comfortable doing alot of coding for personal and business use. The book explains things in a consice step by step manner with tons of real world examples. The author is very easy to read and the book reads like he is having a conversation with you. This is a great book to have in your collection from beginner to expert. NICE JOB Jason!!!

Good coding, bad editing.
I’ve been a PHP programmer for a few years now. I picked up this book (1) to find a good book for people new to PHP and (2) to introducte me to some of the new features of PHP 5. In my opinion, this book does both very well. While it is good to approach this book with some knowledge of programming concepts already under your belt, the book does serve as a good starter guide to PHP. It starts with the basics and builds from there. The overview of the material is excellent, and the chapters on MySQL cover the MySQL features most likely to be useful to PHP programmers.

The biggest fault I have with this book are numerous errors in the writing. The editors should have given the book one more good read-through. The code itself tends to be good, it’s the explanations that sometimes don’t match the code. The errors tend to be pretty minor and the alert reader won’t have any problem realizing the mistake. Still, my wife has gotten tired of my exclamations of, "Here’s another one!"

On the whole a great book that does what it claims to do. I have already recommended this book to others and will continue to do so.

Extremely Helpful
I bought this book to teach myself PHP in order to build a data driven intranet site for my company. Everything I needed to learn was in there, and the topics were clearly explained with plenty of examples. Terrific buy.

Definitely a Solid Text and Title
This is one of the better programming books I have seen in a long time. It really does give you what you need to set up a testing server on Linux or Windows, and heading down the road solidly. It is also a book that actually grows in value as you learn more coding. In essence, you come to undertsand better how to apply his tools and concepts, and PHP functions.

I do agree with most comments here, that this is not suitable for those who do not have some programming basics.Like so many ’beginning’ programming books, its really for someone who simply hasn’t programmed in that particular language. Though the examples are succinct, the bits of code are short by and large, and don’t give a good view of the over all coding logic. Then suddenly a bit of complex code is thrown at you.

The result creates a bit of frustration for those with some experince, and would be defeating for those of virtually no experience. An example is how Sessions are handled. Unlike ASP 3.0, you have to use session_start() on each page, and check for a session before that, before you can actually call Session Variables. This is fairly significant, and yet absolutely no reference is made of this, so the code he uses doesn’t actually work in that bit. I had to go online and hunt it down. Hence, the 4 stars.

Yes, the handling of MySQL is a bit brief, but defintiely gets your feet wet on the most basic of tactics, and he does a very good job of incorporating the uses of Classes here. As well he also talks about different Data Admins.

So, a very good book, useful to the novice and the pro, but in need of a few tweaks.

Very thorough guide for programmers
As said in previous reviews, this book is NOT for those that have little/no knowlege in programming. I have had an introductory class in C++, and I understood much of what is in the book minus the object-oriented stuff. The book would be an excellent guide for those coming from PHP 4 and wanting to learn new features, as well as those experienced in at least one object oriented programming language.

Anyway, on to the actual book. The book has very little overlap in chapters, making it an extremely useful reference tool. It is not a very good book to straight up learn PHP, but rather a method to your madness. By this I mean that it is more useful to read the introduction and start fiddling in PHP then referring to the book to learn new things rather than reading the book and expecting to be able to write some useful code. Although skimming the book is always good to keep the various functions of the language in the back of your mind so you know what you can do, this will probably impact you very little. There is simply too much information to memorize.

So, here are the pros and cons:

PROS
-Excellent reference
-Very thorough
-Does not meddle in basic computer programming practices/terms
-If book were memorized, you really would be a professional in
PHP with a good base for other languages

CONS
-Does not meddle in basic computer programming practices/terms
-Has very few extended examples, mostly small scripts to do
something trivial
-Spends about 1/5 on concept, 4/5 on syntax and functions

This book is definitely in my top 10 PC books!
The author covers every aspects of PHP programming. From the basic syntax (loops, conditions, arrays, string) to more complex topics as security, networking, authentication. He also covers a lot of stuff on mysql database server including its installation with apache, on windows and Linux. There is also sections on server configuration of PHP, Apache, MySQL. The author, obviously, has very good experience in web programming and the tips are unvaluable.

I cannot forget also the "after-sale-service". I had a question regarding "authentication" and I had an answer about an hour after. He says at the beginning of the book that he likes to answer to emails and I can say that it is true!