PHP and MySQL have become a serious and commercially viable system with which to develop web applications. With the relase of PHP 5, J2EE developers, in particular, are starting to take a second look at PHP. And while there are many books on the makret that describe PHP language syntax, there are very few that fully describe web application development with PHP and related technologies. This book describes the complete web application development lifecycle, from planning the application to designing the user interface to building in robust security. And since web applications serve the entire world, often neglected globalization issues are treated in detail. Though MySQL is used throughout the examples, Part IV also contains examples of building applications on top of both Oracle and PostgresSQL, two popular alternatives to MySQL for use in mission-critical systems.

PHP and MySQL have become a serious and commercially viable system with which to develop web applications. With the relase of PHP 5, J2EE developers, in particular, are starting to take a second look at PHP. And while there are many books on the makret that describe PHP language syntax, there are very few that fully describe web application development with PHP and related technologies. This book describes the complete web application development lifecycle, from planning the application to designing the user interface to building in robust security. And since web applications serve the entire world, often neglected globalization issues are treated in detail. Though MySQL is used throughout the examples, Part IV also contains examples of building applications on top of both Oracle and PostgresSQL, two popular alternatives to MySQL for use in mission-critical systems.

The programmer’s Guide to building robust web applications with PHP and MySQL

This is a comprehensive, practical guide for programmers who want to develop production-quality, database-enabled web applications with PHP and MySQL. Long-time developer Marc Wandschneider systematically addresses the entire process: not only coding, but also upfront application, user interface and database design, PLUS security, testing, and more.

You’ll walk through building three applications from start to finish: a calendaring system, a weblog engine, and an e-commerce store. Along the way, you’ll master essential strategies for creating robust web database applications and learn how to avoid the common pitfalls that trip up many developers moving to PHP and MySQL.

• Starts with a complete primer on PHP for developers including coverage of code organization, reuse, and object-oriented PHP
• Contains detailed treatments of data access, including transactions, foreign keys, and indexes
• Presents powerful data validation techniques utilizing PHP regular expressions
• Walks through planning web applications, including user interfaces and user management
• Offers systematic guidance on securing web applications from end to end
• Covers a wide range of implementation issues including internationalization, error handling, data validation, debugging, session management, and deployment
• Includes detailed chapters on XML, XML-based web services, and the PEAR framework for reusable PHP components
• Shows how to work with the Oracle and PostgreSQL databases

Marc Wandschneider has worked extensively with open source platforms, and has written an Outlook Express-style email client for Linux using Qt. He travels the globe, consulting as a lead manager for software projects and teams. A graduate of the McGill University School of Computer Science, he spent five years working for Microsoft, where he developed and managed developers on the Visual Basic, Visual J++, and .NET Windows Forms teams.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

PHP and MySQL have become a serious and commercially viable system with

which to develop web applications. With the relase of PHP 5, J2EE

developers, in particular, are starting to take a second look at PHP. And while

there are many books on the makret that describe PHP language syntax, there

are very few that fully describe web application development with PHP and

related technologies. This book describes the complete web application

development lifecycle, from planning the application to designing the user

interface to building in robust security. And since web applications serve the

entire world, often neglected globalization issues are treated in detail.

Though MySQL is used throughout the examples, Part IV also contains

examples of building applications on top of both Oracle and PostgresSQL, two

popular alternatives to MySQL for use in mission-critical systems.

The programmer™s guide to building robust web applications with PHP and MySQL

This is a comprehensive, practical guide for programmers who want to develop production-quality, database-enabled web applications with PHP and MySQL. Long-time developer Marc Wandschneider systematically addresses the entire process: not only coding, but also upfront application, user interface and database design, PLUS security, testing, and more.

You™ll walk through building three applications from start to finish: a calendaring system, a weblog engine, and an e-commerce store. Along the way, you™ll master essential strategies for creating robust web database applications and learn how to avoid the common pitfalls that trip up many developers moving to PHP and MySQL.

• Starts with a complete primer on PHP for developers"including coverage of code organization, reuse, and object-oriented PHP
• Contains detailed treatments of data access, including transactions, foreign keys, and indexes
• Presents powerful data validation techniques utilizing PHP regular expressions
• Walks through planning web applications, including user interfaces and user management
• Offers systematic guidance on securing web applications from end to end
• Covers a wide range of implementation issues"including internationalization, error handling, data validation, debugging, session management, and deployment
• Includes detailed chapters on XML, XML-based web services, and the PEAR framework for reusable PHP components
• Shows how to work with the Oracle and PostgreSQL databases

Great Intermediate level PHP book
This is a fairly long book at 858 pages. It is well worth your time. It’s well written and therefore, easy to read. Each section gives a detailed explanation, followed by a well commented code example. The index is extensive so it will serve as a good PHP and MySQL reference. The books layout also makes for easy reading. Each chapter, 33 in all, is just long enough to be read in a day, and covers its topic extensively.

I would call this an intermediate level PHP book. It goes beyond your beginning PHP books. Yes, it covers PHP and MySQL basics in the first two sections. And then, it gets into the meat of why your learning PHP and MySQL with major sections on "Planning Web Applications", "Implementing you Web Application, and three "Sample Projects."

What I thought this book added that the basic PHP books do not cover was a constant attention to web security. If security could be a problem in each section of the book, the security issue was explained, and the example showed you how to protect your application from the potential security problem. It also covered areas that are usually glossed over in beginning books, such as cookies & sessions, secure (encryped) layer, user authentication, error handling, form validation, and regular expressions.

You can hardly go wrong with this book, it will give you a solid foundation for whatever you want to do in web development. I highly recommend it.

Good materials to start off with but needs proof reading
As an experience programmer from ASP.Net, I can say that this is a good book for getting into PHP. The book paces pretty well, making sure you get the necessary basics but not bore you with overstuffed material.

The only thing that annoys me, is the amount of typos on the samples and sample codes. If you are a seasoned programmer like me, you will pick them up with no problem before testing them. But for the novice, it could give them extra time debugging.

Still I recommend this book.

A more than plesant surprise
I have had bad luck with the core series of books in the past, they are in desperate need of both a copywriter/spellchecker, and technical fact checker. However this was a very pleasant surprise - it suffered from neither of the above mentioned problems . the author covered topics most other books cover i.e., Unicode handling, Security, and his explanation of OOP in PHP is the best I have ever read.

I would recommend this book to anyone planning to write PHP.

Great Book
I looked in several books regarding this subject and think this is the best book about PHP/Mysql. I just read the first chapter because I am presently too busy with adobe Actionscript. Hope have time soon to continue it.

A Must Have for PHP developer
I don’t write reviews unless I feel very strongly about the book. This is indeed the first time I wrote in amazon.com.
I feel this is the one book you must have for web application development using PHP and mySQL, although frankly there are many good ones around too. I have seen many books and I strongly recommend this.
It has a comprehensive coverage. Many reviews have mentioned it so I am not going to repeat. I find that I learned something not covered in other books - about building robust, secured, and efficient codes. I have not seen people write that kind of codes for PHP. Marc has been most generous in shraring these with the readers. The 3 last projects were superb. It is well suited for the techie.

Does the trick
For a recent project that I needed to build I had to dive into PHP and MySQL. I have purchased quite a few books on the subject matter. A books real value to me is how much the book is used after you finish reading it. This is one of those books that has just enough to get you going on most PHP topics. With the help of this book and a couple of others I have been able to build a complex CMS system. This is the best of the bunch.

Good Introduction
I purchased this book to learn something about both PHP and MySQL. At this time I have read about 200 pages which covers all of PHP and most of the MySQL. It is easy to read. I have not come across any glaring errors. I also have not had time to try the examples although they seem clear enough.

The focus of the book is building web sites as the title implies. I want to use these tools to build a stand-alone application that creates and uses a database. It appears that every thing I need is in the book. It tells you how to connect to the database from PHP, how to create and manage tables, how to manipulate the data in the tables. It even gives a brief introduction to the normalization of your tables.

I am very happy with the book for my goals.

Good start !!
The way that the author guide you through this book is excelent.



Don’t hope so much for MySQL but it’s an excelent beginning, so clear and always in focus..



The last exercises are really very interesting, but I recommend that follow them very carefully becouse they need some adjusts to work! but that’s the idea or not?

Good start !!
The way that the author guide you through this book is excelent.

Don’t hope so much for MySQL but it’s an excelent beginning, so clear and always in focus..

The last exercises are really very interesting, but I recommend that follow them very carefully becouse they need some adjusts to work! but that’s the idea or not?

Delicious, bite-sized chunks of PHP goodness
All computer books should be written like this.

This is a very conscise, well written book that leaves no stone unturned on the subject matter and is presented in short, complete chapters that allow you quickly build up useable modules of knowledge on PHP & MySQL while building up to a complete understanding by the end.

This is a great place to start on PHP & MySQL and will serve as a great ongoing reference for a long time to come.

Delicious, bite-sized chunks of PHP goodness
All computer books should be written like this.



This is a very conscise, well written book that leaves no stone unturned on the subject matter and is presented in short, complete chapters that allow you quickly build up useable modules of knowledge on PHP & MySQL while building up to a complete understanding by the end.



This is a great place to start on PHP & MySQL and will serve as a great ongoing reference for a long time to come.

Great for learning
I didn’t know anything about PHP or mySQL but using the book I’ve managed to build myself a decent web application. Great to learn and walks through a lot!

a very interesting and well written book
This book was a true revelation to me. I’ve read a couple introduction books in php and tried some more advanced books. But they all stuck to small examples and none of them explained how to code a real life working web application from scratch. This book does, in such way you get totally hooked and can’t stop reading.

I truly recommend this book to everybody who wants to develop a robust and working web application.

Best Book On This I have seen
This is the best book I have seen as far as getting into the core of PHP and MySQL development. Wandschneider does an excellent job of explaining the details and practical applications of each subject without getting too dry. This is a must read for all my students and I highly recommend it!

A very good introduction to PHP
I am an experienced web developer. I found this book very informative and interesting. The author has really done very good job. He has in fact sold PHP to me. I have decided to opt PHP for my future projects. The credit goes to the book.

The most usefull thing I think is the complete code examples...

I love this book!
The author covers a great deal on commands and syntax, but the true strength of this title lies in its ability impart an understanding of the logic and numerous concepts behind PHP/MySQL development. I would most recommend this book to those individuals who are comfortable with HTML and CSS, and have at least minimal programming experience. Sharp and dedicated "no-experience" beginners could probably figure things out as they go along, but it would require some effort. I personally think that’s a fair trade for a book that will prove itself invaluable to anyone seriously interested in learning PHP/MySQL development.

Learn to use this combination for great web applications
Divided into five sections this book attempts to cover pretty much everything you need to know to develop web based applications with PHP and MySQL. Part one goes over the basics of PHP including data types, variables, functions, object-oriented programming, arrays, and forms. The second part the looks at databases including designing, creating, and using a database. It includes a very good section on the basics of database design. This part ends with a chapter that brings these first two sections together by examining how to use PHP to access your database. Now that you understand how PHP and MySQL are going to work together the author turns to how to design web applications including the user interface and user management. Of course he also looks at code security and other security issues for web applications. This is the part of planning that should occur before any code is written. It helps tremendously if you know what you are trying to achieve before writing code and this part of the book covers how to do that very well. The fourth part examines how to implement your web application and covers error handling, cookies, authentication, buffering, validation, regular expressions, XML, XHTML, working with files and directories, and deploying the application. Finally the last part is filled with sample projects including an appointment manager, blogging engine, and an eCommerce application. All the source code from the book is included on a CD-ROM so you can cut and paste and adapt to your needs. An excellent guide for programmers working with PHP and MySQL enabled web sites, Core Web Application Development with PHP and MySQL is highly recommended.

Developing applications instead of standalone pages...
I had a blog reader email me today and ask if I knew of any good books on PHP and MySQL. Being that I’d like to learn more about both of those subjects myself, I recently had requested (and had sitting in my review pile) a copy of Core Web Application Development With PHP And MySQL by Mark Wandschneider. If you’re focused on *application development* (rather than just learning how to create a dynamic page), then this book works pretty well...

Contents:
Part 1 - The Basics of PHP: Getting Started with PHP; The PHP Language; Code Organization and Reuse; Object-Oriented Programming; Working with Arrays; Strings and Characters of the World; Interacting with the Server - Forms
Part 2 - Database Basics: Introduction to Databases; Designing and Creating Your Database; Using Databases - Storing and Retrieving Data; Using Databases - Advanced Data Access; PHP and Data Access
Part 3 - Planning Web Applications: Web Applications and the Internet; Implementing a User Interface; User Management; Securing Your Web Applications - Planning and Code Security; Securing Your Web Applications - Software and Hardware Security
Part 4 - Implementing Your Web Applications: Error Handling and Debugging; Cookies and Sessions; User Authentication; Advanced Output and Output Buffering; Data Validation with Regular Expressions; XML and XHTML; Files and Directories; File Uploading; Working with Dates and Times; XML Web Services and SOAP; Using PEAR; Development and Deployment
Part 5 - Sample Projects and Further Ideas: Strategies for Successful Web Applications; An Appointment Manager; A Blogging Engine; An Ecommerce Application
Appendixes: Installation/Configuration; Database Function Equivalents; Recommended Reading
Index

I differentiated the type of learning at the start of this review on purpose. It’s pretty easy to go into learning a new language focusing solely on the nuts and bolts of the syntax. That’s really not the pattern that’s followed with this book. You don’t just learn how to add some PHP code to your page in order to display the time of day to the user. The goal here is to learn how to build an *application* instead of just a single dynamic page. The layout and flow of the book supports that goal well. You start with basic PHP concepts and syntax. Then you move on to basic database concepts that are used in MySQL (and in fact *any* relational database system). Once those two basic skill sets are covered, then the blending occurs. You start learning how to use PHP to read and store data in MySQL, and those concepts are then used to build an end-to-end application. Throw in the essentials of securing your application and making it bulletproof for users, and you have a pretty encompassing guide for a development professional to use.

If PHP and MySQL were going to be something I used on a regular basis, I’d follow up this book with two specific titles for PHP and MySQL. Even though this Core title is large, there’s no way it can cover all the details on either subject. And in reality, I don’t think you’d want that if this is your first exposure. A practical volume such as this one will get you thinking correctly as far as design and techniques go, and then you can decide if this is where you want to commit your time and resources.

Nicely done book, and one I’d recommend for your first PHP/MySQL experience. I’ll be revisiting this book myself in 2006 in order to pick up a few more skills...

I bought this one as my first choice
As a beginner seeking to develop as much beginning-to-intermediate knowledge and information about PHP and MySQL as possible in the coming two months, I went to local book stores to see all the titles offered on these two topics -- and to select the best.

"Core Web Application Development with PHP and MySQL" by Marc Wandschneider was the book I bought. -- [Jump down to later portions of this review if you don’t want to read about how terrific the page layouts are.]

This newly published title offers the perfect blend of depth, high readability, quality writing, and outstandingly handsome and clean page design and layout -- a significant attribute in the face of so many computer books on store shelves with layouts that are so cramped, ugly, cluttered and dense.

Many computer books offer wasted galaxies of white space wrapped around text which itself has been reduced to microscopically small unreadability. In contrast, this book utilizes white space in perfect elegance and moderation. The typeface is never too tiny, and it changes frequently in helpful and readable ways. The author owes the editor and designer a high debt of gratitude for the rare and incredible job of page design.

OK, Yes, the Contents: As a motivated beginner I cannot fully address the technical content itself (since I have yet to master it), but I recognize good books -- and well-written books -- when I see them. This is one. -- [Another review located here provides a detailed breakdown of the contents, chapter-by-chapter.]

In my estimation, this book is targeted to the motivated beginner through high intermediate user, and I only say high intermediate because this generous book of 787 pages does not strive to be the super overly-complete master compendium bible on PHP and MySQL, but only a highly accessible and informative one, while still offering the reader a very nice learning curve for growth, challenge and involvement.

The essence of this book is captured in this phrase: "Challenging content; invitingly written; easily digested."

The author is to be thanked for the wonderfully clear and straightforward foundational explanations he provides in the text before bringing readers into the heart of each chapter. Those central parts of each chapter are momentarily beyond my capacity, but the outstanding introductory material at the start of almost every chapter is an immensely useful service to the motivated beginner.

Soon as I give myself a brush-up on X/HTML tags and some generic programming/coding concepts like functions and variables and calls and loops and conditionals and arrays, this beginner will be nicely prepared to dig most productively into this terrific new offering of a book.

PS -- If the beginner is not striving to be "super system administrator supreme," then by adding the above book to these several others below, he/she will have a great beginning collection by which to get a confident handle on MySQL and PHP programming concepts and skills:

-- Learning PHP 5 by David Sklar (O’Reilly)
-- PHP 5 in easy steps by Mike McGrath (Barnes & Noble!)
-- MySQL Essential Skills by John Horn/Michael Grey (McGraw Hill/Osborne)
-- MySQL Complete Reference -- Vikram Vaswani (McGraw Hill/Osborne)

Yes, I do know what the super-comprehensive "bibles" on MySQL/PHP are, and some are very successful and I may use some of them in future, but I find that I usually NEVER read "the big bibles" all the way through.

In contrast, you (if a beginner) will definitely enjoy reading the above five volumes ALL the way through, especially this delicious title at hand: "Core Web Application Development with PHP and MySQL" by Marc Wandschneider.

Nice strategic overview
"Core Web Application Development with PHP and MySQL" is an intermediate to advanced-level guide for programmers and developers. It bills itself as "everything one needs to know about building robust database applications". That is a bit of puffery but this is a comprehensive practical guide for designing and building production-quality, database-enabled applications.

The author is an open-source platform expert and software developer. He comes from a background of working with standard desktop Windows-based applications and made the transition to building dynamic web applications. His experience in making the transition informs this book as a comprehensive explanation of how to use the various technologies that go into writing web applications. For those making similar transitions, this is a very fine presentation done by a thoughtful, systematic designer. For those already busy in the PHP/MySQL area, the advanced level of instruction is likely to be valuable.

The emphasis is on open-source applications, particularly PHP5 and MySQL in an XHTML/Javascript environment. But, beyond technologies, the author’s focus is on the strategies and systematic approach one needs to design and implement successful web applications. He writes for an advanced audience which is already basically familiar with programming and XHTML. Those writing or planning dynamic web applications will benefit most from the book.

There are 33 chapters in five parts - basics of PHP, database basics, planning web applications, implementation, and sample projects. There are three appendices covering installation and configuration of PHP, MySQL, and other related open-source applications like Apache, a set of charts of database function equivalents among the leading database types - MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and a short list of recommended reading.

This is a large format book of 912 pages, including index. My reviewer’s copy is a prepublication version containing grayscale graphics and much white space, especially around the code snippets, making reading easy and comfortable. Although the material is high-level and technical, the writing seems light and casual. Wandschneider’s writing style flows easily, never bogs down even with technical details, and the book reads much faster than one might expect.

Although the best part of the book contains the three start-to-finish sample projects at the end - a calendar system, weblog engine, and e-commerce store, the lead-in chapters are nicely done, too. Chapters 1 and 2 are about getting started in PHP. There is a brief comparison to perl and C++, but the bulk is about PHP terminology and programming concepts. Much is made of PHP5’s new object-oriented features, but the discussions of that here (and in Chapter 4) was about the only parts which I feel needed more clarity - the rest of the chapters are very clearly stated and contain plenty of good examples.

Chapters 3 - 7 continue with scripting concepts like functions, classes, arrays, strings and characters. The discussion is not designed to instruct comprehensively about PHP itself but works on a higher level of showing how PHP interacts with MySQL and other technologies on an overall basis. You can get detailed PHP coding instructions elsewhere. Chapter 6 contains an unusually good discussion of character sets, usable for global applications, and provides instructions on configuring Unicode and multi-byte support for high-level applications.

Part 2, Chapters 8 - 12, take the same approach to MySQL and databases in general. They include discussion of basic terminology and concepts, designing and creating databases, storing and retrieving data, PHP-to-database connectivity, and advanced topics, like use of "transactions" and advanced querying.

Part 3, Chapters 13 - 17, deal with the server-side matters. Again, the level of presentation is not on comprehensive details of PHP, MySQL, and web services, but present a comprehensive overview to guide planning, design, and implementation. Here the author states overall design considerations of a website noting how to incorporate CSS, HTML, code libraries, user interfaces, and web services into a working dynamic website.

User management and security concerns are noted throughout the book and Chapters 14 - 17 deal specifically with validation, and software and hardware security, including tips on how to secure your server. These passages on security are some of the better and clearest written I’ve experienced in this area.

Part IV continues the systematic approach to website construction discussing error handling, debugging, cookies, and sessions (again some of the clearest explanations I’ve read), authorization, and data validation with regular expressions. Chapter 21 is entirely about globalization and localization that is, dealing with the fact that the Internet is global and that there is a need to deal with foreign language sets. There are tips on how to determine users’ locations and how to script to account for different language sets, including Unicode.

Chapters 23 and 27 are about XML and are especially useful now that XML and XHTML are becoming the reigning protocols of dynamic web activity. There is an extensive sample of using XML to work with the Google API. Using XML with PHP is an advanced topic and it is only generally covered here, together with XML web services and SOAP. Other chapters cover the use of extensions to PHP, like PEAR, developing a coding "style", creating test suites, configuring PHP.ini, and more. The three working examples are extensively commented and contain complete code examples.

The book comes with a comparison CD-ROM containing all of the sample code, and versions of PHP5, MySQL, and Apache HTTP server.

comprehensive server side discussion
The reason for the book’s length is that the author is attempting to cover a lot of ground. There are comprehensive and separate descriptions of PHP and MySQL. Keep in mind that each has multiple books devoted to it. The PHP section has a good emphasis on object oriented coding. This can be vital if you have a large PHP code body, for using OO helps code scale to larger sizes.

The MySQL section of the text is also nontrivial. Amongst other things, it describes how to design and create a database. Ideas that are largely independent of MySQL, though they can be, and are, implemented in it, in the text.

Of course, the main attraction of the book is in combining PHP and MySQL. Here, the book goes into how to make a multitier architecture, from the client side to the database. Chapter 14 on writing the user interface is a little skimpy. But other chapters on the server side issues have more detail on their subjects. Which includes a chapter on XML. Quite aside from PHP or MySQL, knowing how to use XML can be important to you.

The book even finds time to cover Web Services and how you might implement and interact with these, using PHP.

Much more than another PHP reference book
This book just arrived today and it is amazing. Not only is it a complete guide to PHP and MySQL, but it’s written in such a clear way that someone who has never programmed before, could write a mature and robust web application, using this book. I have read a lot of technical books and this one is top notch. The code snippets and diagrams are first rate. Marc writes in a clear conversational style, with a great sense of humor, that makes the concepts very easy to understand.