PHP and MySQL Web Development, Second Edition teaches the reader to develop dynamic, secure, commercial Web sites. Using the same accessible, popular teaching style of the first edition, this best-selling book has been updated to reflect the rapidly changing landscape of MySQL and PHP. The book teaches the reader to integrate and implement these technologies by following real-world examples and working sample projects, and also covers related technologies needed to build a commercial Web site, such as SSL, shopping carts, and payment systems. The second edition includes new coverage of how to work with XML in developing a PHP and MySQL site, and how to draw on the valuable resources of the PEAR repository of code and extensions.

Laura Thomson is a lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Information Technology at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. She is also a partner in the award-winning Web-development firm Tangled Web Design. Laura has previously worked for Telstra and the Boston Consulting Group. She holds a Bachelor of Applied Science (Computer Science) degree and a Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Systems Engineering) degree with honors, and is currently completing her Ph.D. in Adaptive Web Sites. In her spare time, she enjoys sleeping. Laura can be reached via email at laura@tangledweb.com.au.

Luke Welling is a lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Information Technology at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. He is also a partner in Tangled Web Design. He holds a Bachelor of Applied Science (Computer Science) degree and is currently completing a master’s degree in Genetic Algorithms for Communication Network Design. In his spare time, he attempts to perfect his insomnia. Luke can be reached via email at luke@tangledweb.com.au.

PHP and MySQL Web Development teaches the reader to develop dynamic, secure, commercial Web sites. Using the same accessible, popular teaching style of the first edition, this best-selling book has been updated to reflect the rapidly changing landscape of MySQL and PHP.

The book teaches the reader to integrate and implement these technologies by following real-world examples and working sample projects, and also covers related technologies needed to build a commercial Web site, such as SSL, shopping carts, and payment systems.

The second edition includes new coverage of how to work with XML in developing a PHP and MySQL site, and how to draw on the valuable resources of the PEAR repository of code and extensions.

Learning PHP is worth your time because you can do so much with it. Backed by a MySQL database server, the language makes an extraordinary engine for doing server-side scripting on Web sites. PHP and MySQL Web Development aims to unravel the wonderful possibilities of the two title technologies by walking the reader through tutorials, then presenting a series of moderately elaborate example projects. The PHP tutorial will impress anyone coming to the language from simple HTML work, and the MySQL tutorial is adequate for most applications (though it ignores the relational capabilities that appeared in version 4 with the InnoDB table type). If you like to study code (both listings and commentary), you’ll appreciate the authors’ solutions to common problems, like implementing shopping sites and managing restricted-access rules.

The programming approach of Luke Welling and Laura Thomson is procedural, neglecting the object-oriented capabilities of PHP almost entirely. It’s a valid choice, as most PHP code is written in procedural style. As well, they’ve chosen to build their software around PHP 4.3, which doesn’t have as much object-orientation capability of the new version 5 release. Some readers may lament the lack of up-to-date coverage, but others--perhaps serving sites from hosting services that run well-proven PHP 4.x--will appreciate that the authors took time to revise their PHP 4.3 code samples (which should, in most cases, be backward-compatible), rather than writing PHP 5 code for its own sake. --David Wall

Topics covered: How to program with PHP 4.3 (and its predecessors) and store data in a MySQL database. PHP coverage is extensive, covering all capabilities from basic form-handing to Web Services, while MySQL coverage is limited to the essentials of database setup and administration. Elaborate applications--such as a PDF generator and a content-management system--are written in a way that invites learning and adaptation.

PHP and MySQL Web Development teaches the reader to develop dynamic, secure, commercial Web sites. Using the same accessible, popular teaching style of the first edition, this best-selling book has been updated to reflect the rapidly changing landscape of MySQL and PHP.

The book teaches the reader to integrate and implement these technologies by following real-world examples and working sample projects, and also covers related technologies needed to build a commercial Web site, such as SSL, shopping carts, and payment systems.

The second edition includes new coverage of how to work with XML in developing a PHP and MySQL site, and how to draw on the valuable resources of the PEAR repository of code and extensions.

Excellent Resource
I was a total newcomer to PHP and MySQL and this book gave me a good grounding in both. Very good workable examples and easy to adapt to your needs.

Great but not that Great.
This is my 2nd book regarding php and mysql. My first one got stolen a while back. Anyways, This is a great resource for those who want to create php dynamic and interactive web pages. The codes are good but ive seen better. With this book, You could start making php in no time at all. Samples are interesting and the codes could be used to jump start your own projects. I recommend this for beginners and mid-level php programmers.

PS: I spilled coffee on mine :(

Great but not that Great.
This is my 2nd book regarding php and mysql. My first one got stolen a while back. Anyways, This is a great resource for those who want to create php dynamic and interactive web pages. The codes are good but ive seen better. With this book, You could start making php in no time at all. Samples are interesting and the codes could be used to jump start your own projects. I recommend this for beginners and mid-level php programmers.

PS: I spilled coffee on mine :(

Fantastic Book in-depth and useful evento beginners
I am fairly new to the whole web programing thing, but this book made learning PHP an absolute doddle. Easy reading gets more complicated as time goes on but thats the whole idea. The CD-ROM is of an excellent standard and all of the examples supplied are easy to use and work perfectly. Need a book to learn PHP and the operation of MySQL this is it there is a 3rd Edition out now which may be worth buying as its a tenner less but not looked into it this book covers all of the up-to-date information that I need.

The projects are the real jewel of the book
This is a well-written book for learning how to build Internet applications with two of the most popular open-source web development technologies. PHP is one of the big four server-side scripting languages (along with ASP, ColdFusion, and JSP) and MySQL is one of the best high performance, scalable web-based RDBMS systems available. Together, they provide a powerful combination. The book is divided into two sections; the first half of the book gets you up to speed with both PHP and MySQL, while the second half presents some practical projects. The projects are the real jewel of the book. Not only are the projects described and constructed in a logical, component-based manner, but the selection of projects represents an excellent cross-section of common components that are built into many web sites, including: user authentication and personalization, a shopping cart, content management system, web-based email service, mailing list manager, and web forums. Because of the selection and clarity of the projects, this book makes a great general purpose reference for how to build these types of web applications, no matter which implementation language you choose.

The projects are the real jewel of the book
This is a well-written book for learning how to build Internet applications with two of the most popular open-source web development technologies. PHP is one of the big four server-side scripting languages (along with ASP, ColdFusion, and JSP) and MySQL is one of the best high performance, scalable web-based RDBMS systems available. Together, they provide a powerful combination. The book is divided into two sections; the first half of the book gets you up to speed with both PHP and MySQL, while the second half presents some practical projects. The projects are the real jewel of the book. Not only are the projects described and constructed in a logical, component-based manner, but the selection of projects represents an excellent cross-section of common components that are built into many web sites, including: user authentication and personalization, a shopping cart, content management system, web-based email service, mailing list manager, and web forums. Because of the selection and clarity of the projects, this book makes a great general purpose reference for how to build these types of web applications, no matter which implementation language you choose.

A good book
This book was suggested to me to used if I wanted to learn PHP and MySQL. I found it to be a very good book but at times there were sections that were not explained well enough and also there were some typos in the code sections. Beside that this book is a very good book to use, but I would advise getting a complimentary book especially if this is your first stab at programming in PHP or using MySQL. This is more of an intermediate level book than a beginner book.

A good book
This book was suggested to me to used if I wanted to learn PHP and MySQL. I found it to be a very good book but at times there were sections that were not explained well enough and also there were some typos in the code sections. Beside that this book is a very good book to use, but I would advise getting a complimentary book especially if this is your first stab at programming in PHP or using MySQL. This is more of an intermediate level book than a beginner book.

It does the job, and it does it well
Before begin what I have to say about the book, I have to position me on the subject. I am considered an expert user, with a B.Sc. in Informatics, but I haven’t practice programming for more than a decade. So, I understand the aspects of programming and databases, but I was not familiar with PHP and MySQL before reading this book. And after finish reading it I was, so I believe that this book it does its job and it does it well, at least to a person like me.
It explains the aspects of PHP and progressively it leads the reader to more elements of the language. It is not a reference, so you will need a reference (probably an online one) to see the arguments of a function, etc. But, if you know that a function exists, it is very easy to use it...
The book also shows the reader how PHP integrates with a database like MySQL. With this knowledge, you can make a dynamic web site by yourself. It is actually easy for an entry level web site.
There are more to learn that are not covered on this book. But if you master the content of this book, you have the basis to a deeper usage of PHP and making of dynamic web sites.
Finally, I have to mention the contents of the CD-ROM, that includes a complete application, an example that is devoloped in every chapter of the book. You can see how things work by using the application from the CD-ROM.
A very good book to understand PHP and database based web sites. Probably not the best, but certainly a good and effective one.

It does the job, and it does it well
Before begin what I have to say about the book, I have to position me on the subject. I am considered an expert user, with a B.Sc. in Informatics, but I haven’t practice programming for more than a decade. So, I understand the aspects of programming and databases, but I was not familiar with PHP and MySQL before reading this book. And after finish reading it I was, so I believe that this book it does its job and it does it well, at least to a person like me.
It explains the aspects of PHP and progressively it leads the reader to more elements of the language. It is not a reference, so you will need a reference (probably an online one) to see the arguments of a function, etc. But, if you know that a function exists, it is very easy to use it...
The book also shows the reader how PHP integrates with a database like MySQL. With this knowledge, you can make a dynamic web site by yourself. It is actually easy for an entry level web site.
There are more to learn that are not covered on this book. But if you master the content of this book, you have the basis to a deeper usage of PHP and making of dynamic web sites.
Finally, I have to mention the contents of the CD-ROM, that includes a complete application, an example that is devoloped in every chapter of the book. You can see how things work by using the application from the CD-ROM.
A very good book to understand PHP and database based web sites. Probably not the best, but certainly a good and effective one.

For PHP, buy this book first
This is one of the best computer books I’ve ever used. It serves as excellent introduction to PHP covering critical aspects of the language at a decent pace, and breaks out the theory and practice of MySQL in a logical fashion. It serves well as a tutorial and reference.

You’ll want to graduate onto other texts after you’ve absorbed this material and I recommend Lerdorf & Tatroe, Programming PHP - but that’s because the lucid presentation of this book gave me the encouragement to find out more.

Some other reviewers have missed the point about learning PHP from this book. Firstly it requires effort, and secondly you are far better off trying a basic installation on a scratch PC on your desk than trying out scripts on an ISP account.

Where this book scores highly for me is that for both PHP and MySQL it answers my questions on "How would you do that?" or "How do other guys solve that kind of problem?", which is quite rare in a single book.

Better know PHP
I got this book because I wanted to learn PHP and MySQL. Although the book does an OK job helping you set up your AMP, you will need to visit the MySQL, PHP and Apache sites to complete your setup. The PHP info given is really quick, I assume the author thinks because he mentions something that I am suppose to completely understand. This book is not for beginners at all. It seemed to have some good info and nice code to help you build a site as long as you did not plan on altering the code to much, because you better know what you are doing. I’m sure this book would be good for someone who has some programming experience not just HTML. You should look else where if you have no actual programming experience.

Better know PHP
I got this book because I wanted to learn PHP and MySQL. Although the book does an OK job helping you set up your AMP, you will need to visit the MySQL, PHP and Apache sites to complete your setup. The PHP info given is really quick, I assume the author thinks because he mentions something that I am suppose to completely understand. This book is not for beginners at all. It seemed to have some good info and nice code to help you build a site as long as you did not plan on altering the code to much, because you better know what you are doing. I’m sure this book would be good for someone who has some programming experience not just HTML. You should look else where if you have no actual programming experience.

One book to start our company
I am an above-average computer user, who has been mostly living in the Windows world. Recently, my friends and I have decided to create a business -- an e-commerce business. We knew nothing about how to do that. We are all electrical engineers, and are good at programming -- but have never really been concerned with how a website operates from the developer’s standpoint. I purchased this book out of the blue -- based on the ratings it had and the sheer number of pages (I know that’s lame but I’m being honest).

This book has single-handedly enabled us to start our e-commerce website. I have since configured my backup machine into a linux server, and have PHP, MySQL, and Apache running on it flawlessly. I haven’t even got to chapter 12 yet, and I already have the database and the online applications up and running.

The real value of this book to me is the knowledge that other books take for granted. For example, in the appendix there is a complete how-to that describes where to get the PHP, MySQL, and Apache downloads, what versions to get, and how to install (and configure them) them both in linux and Windows. This information was critical. I needed the "enter this command to do this task" kind of guidance, as opposed to the "do this task" alternative I find in other books.

In the sections regarding the PHP syntax, it makes a clear distinction between the new features of PHP5 versus PHP4, and how to use the older versions if need be. As someone who is just learning the PHP language -- this also was very valuable information.

In a little more than a week, I went from a Windows XP user, to a linux server administrator writing (and debugging) PHP/MySQL applications who is able to answer server/database/PHP questions asked by my business partners. I highly recommend this book.

Beginner to Intermediate
This is an excellent book if you already know something about PHP and MYSQL and want to look for something that would give you more confidence in building interactive websites. The author of the book is very knowledgeable and use many technical terms, and some later advanced chapters may require some thoughts. If you’re a complete beginner, then it might take some time to get used to the book.
The examples included in the book include many useful features, such as forums, membership site, content management system, etc... even running creating an ecommmerce site (though it won’t be very pretty)

Not for Beginners
I am new to PHP/MySQL. I spent a lot of time on the internet(php,mysql,apache sites)learning first how to install AMP(apache, mysql, PHP). The book does an OK job but it really does not cover troubleshooting very well. Once I got my enviornment up and running, the book was OK. Again, not for beginners. I am going to be taking a class later to help explain things a little better. I was able to get out what I needed, but I would not buy this book if I was looking to learn from scratch.

Wow! It has it all!
Great book. It’s becoming my bible! Would recommend for the beginner and beyond.

A good book, but some confusing chapters towards the end...
To start with, this book is great. I already have some knowledge of HTML and scripting so I was able to go through the early chapters at speed. It provides a good working knowledge of PHP and is also a useful reference for when you are building MySQL databases. Unfortunately the book also has some bad points. As you can see above, the book is written by two authors so the design and layout of the example code changes in the later chapters (chapters 24 onwards) because of the different author. She is not so good. The examples codes are confusing to read because of the large number of ’include’ files required by each page. I do realise the importance of designing pages in this way on larger sites, but this just makes it much harder when you are trying to learn PHP. Badly naming the page variables and completely leaving out the coding for the input pages are some of the other tricks she uses to ensure that you have to read each page again slowly and rely too heavily on the examples provided on the CD to understand whats happening. She seems to take for granted the reason you bought this book in the first place is because you dont know PHP.

Good book/reference manual.
This book is ideal for those beginning PHP who want simplified examples to follow. The book does not go into much depth which I personally found dissapointing(the reason i gave it only 4 stars). The last few chapters are devoted to project ideas (forum,email,shopping cart) with code explanation, which you can extend if you wanted.

I would desribe this book as for beginners looking for there first book but not for those who have developed in PHP before. Coupled with the PHP manual(a brilliant resource in itself) you will soon be developing web applications.

Great Layout, Great Content, Great CD-ROM, GREAT BOOK!
Firstly, i was more or less a beginner to mysql and php. I had bought a book to learn the basics and was ready for the really juicy stuff. This book had it all. It starts with a crash course for beginners (allthough i wasnt a beginner and still learnt from it) and progresses on to content management systems, forums, shopping carts and much more. Showing you how to create great php applications fast and professionally. Great book. Strongly recommended for Beginners and Intermediate.

Buy it now!
A fantastic book buy it! I bought this book knowing a few programming languages and a small amount of SQL. I hadn’t touched PHP in my life. I found it very easy to use and everything was explained in a clear and professional method. I found that I could start using the language very quickly and once I had a basic grasp the books role changed from being a good learning tool into a very useful reference book.
I would highly recommend it. I am after a similar book for ASP now!

No fancy cartoons just good instructions
I hesitated starting this book as it looked so huge and didn’t have the cutsy cartoons in many other beginners books but I was pleasantly surprised.

The instructions are very clear and set out in a logical manner making it very easy to use. If you have a little understanding of PHP already you can jump straight to one of the well explained examples. Another good point is the examples are of practical use. Rather than making you create a pointless loop to count from 1 to 10 it starts straight off with teaching you how to add up an customers order and add shipping and tax!

Later the examples include making shopping carts and customer accounts that they can login to etc.

Also includes a CD with the examples mentioned in the book as well as aphache server, php and MySql to get you going. The instructions for setting this up are also much better than in other PHP books I’ve read.

In summary Very Practical and easy to understand despite no cartoons or colour pictures.

Don’t hesitate - just buy it
As a relative newcomer to PHP and MySQL (but with some experience in older programming languages) I started by purchasing separate, basic books on PHP and MySQL. Both were fine, but soon failed to take me far enough.

"PHP and MySQL Web Development" looked to be an excellent ’second stage’ text book, and I have not been disappointed.

Worthy of particular mention, is that fact that this book is relatively formal: no jokes or rows of exclamation marks. Frankly I don’t want a jokey atmosphere in a text book, so this feature gains the book at least one extra star just for being aimed at an adult audience.

The introductions to PHP and MySQL are excellent, as are the examples, and every few pages I found myself thinking "Now I can add that feature to my website" or "That answers a question that’s been bugging me for a while". Even regular expressions now make sense.

Advanced users - a stage which I doubt I will ever reach - will need a book that takes them further, but this is the perfect book for intermediate-level users, and thus far I haven’t found any part of the book which I would criticise.

Summary: A PHP and MySQL manual for grown-ups. Highly recommended.

Nigel Utting

fantastic for experts and beginners alike
Having used several programming languages in the past I wanted to move into PHP and MySQL. Unlike other scripting languages, PHP is fairly easy to pick up especially for those with a javascript background. This book makes it even easier by being a very quick read by programming standards and everything is well explained with useful examples.

I cannot fault this book, it is superb. If you are not sure which PHP / SQL book to choose, you cannot go wrong choosing this one.

Absolutely top class, first rate book!
This book is a no-nonsense, cut-to-the-chase, teach you all the essentials for the novice + plenty of advanced principles and source code for the seasoned developer. I love it! Well done Luke and Laura, I own plenty of PHP and MySQL books and this is by far one of the best, if not, the very best. I purchased both editions of the book and both times I have never been disappointed. It serves as a fantastic programmers guide and reference, and the CD that comes with the book contains tons of code for use in your own projects. A MUST BUY! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Best programming book ever
This is far and away the best programming book I have ever read. If you want to make a site using PHP and MySQL DB backend this is the book for you. I thought the level was just right, you’d need some programming experience but not to an advanced level to get on well with it.

I felt it was laid out well and as I would achieve something with my site and was ready to move on to the next level, it would be there in the next chapter (e.g. Session control with PHP). Excellent examples are another strong feature, with everything (including a FULL e-book) you would want comes on the CD too.

Superb - For the Experienced and Novice
This book is a model of clarity. It covers a difficult subject area comprehensively with excellent writing. The projects detailed provide just about all one would need to build a portal site with shopping carts, user logins, mailing list management etc. All that is required is a knowledge of HTML and a genuine interest in making the web do what YOU want it to do.

The accompanying CD contains all you need (software, example code etc.) to start learning alongside the text.

Usage of PHP and MySQL is sweeping the web at the moment: this book is a must have library addition. One of the best technical (& programming) books I have read in 20 years of computing.