Taking care to focus solely on those topics that will have the most impact on experienced PHP developers, Pro PHP is written for readers seeking to take their understanding of both PHP and sound software development practices to the next level. Advanced object-oriented features, documentation, debugging, software patterns, and the Standard PHP Library are just a few of the topics covered in extensive detail.

Author and noted PHP expert Kevin McArthur also examines emerging practices and trends such as the MVC architecture as applied to PHP, with special emphasis placed upon the increasingly popular Zend Framework.

With Ajax and web services crucial to the success of today’s web applications, the book concludes with several chapters covering JSON, the SOAP extension, and advanced web services topics.

If you’re seeking to go beyond the basics, Pro PHP is the book for you.

Something to learn, even for advanced PHP developers
As an experienced PHP developer and author myself I was delighted that Pro PHP showed me a number of new techniques that I can apply to my own every day development tasks. This makes me confident that developers of all levels will gain value out of reading this book. I typically like to keep up with recently released books so I know the material that is available, but as somebody who has been programming PHP for almost 10 years I generally don’t find new ideas that can be applied to general PHP programming.

Two such examples of this in Pro PHP that helped me are array overloading with the ArrayAccess SPL class and the observer pattern using SplObserver and SplSubject. Firstly, ArrayAccess allows you to access objects (such as reading and writing) as you would with an array. One such example of this is in the PHP SimpleXMLElement class. Secondly, using the observer pattern allows one object to monitor the state of another object and react to these changes as desired. Kevin describes these to the reader and provides solid examples of using them.

An interesting aspect of this book is the chapter dedicated to PHP 6. Although a stable version has not yet been released, Kevin covers the key features that we can look forward to such as namespaces, late binding and native Unicode support.

The other thing that I like about Kevin’s style and methods are that they are fairly similar to my own, meaning for the most part I agree with his methods and therefore recommend them to other users as well.

On the whole I would have two minor complaints with this book. Firstly, there is a lot of "conceptual code" rather than practical real-world examples. Having said that, there are so many different ideas in this book that it would be difficult to fit longer examples for these ideas. Secondly, I would’ve liked to see some more extensive coverage of the Xdebug module. This is a module that I try to use but I feel like I am under using its potential. It is great that Kevin covers it in Pro PHP, but I would’ve liked to see some slightly more advanced usage for my own benefit.

In summary, I would definitely recommend reading this book, especially if you have been slow to transition from PHP 4 to PHP 5, or if you use PHP 5 but know you don’t take full advantage of its Object Oriented Programming features.

A great intro to patterns, frameworks, testing and more
I recently received a copy of this book to review from the publisher and thought I would post a quick review here.

The book covers a variety of topics and manages to fit everything in to a little over 300 pages. As such, although each section is a good introduction to the topic being discussed, it is only an introduction. If you’re looking to get this book as a complete reference to one particular subject covered there may be better books available. Taking this book for what it is though you are not going to be disappointed. It is very well written, repetition is kept to a minimum and the examples are easy to follow. I haven’t tested all the code samples but if they have been checked as well as the text then errors are unlikely to be present.

The OOP and Patterns section is a nice introduction to the subject and added detail to my understanding of some areas.

The Testing and Documentation section is the only section I found less than entirely satisfying. That isn’t to say that what’s there isn’t very good, but that I would have liked to see more discussion of testing and less on documentation.

The SPL section gives a very nice introduction to an area with less than stellar documentation. If you want to search around you can find the first chapter of this section on the devzone over at Zend.

The section on the MVC pattern quickly focuses on the Zend framework. The discussion quickly moves away from the MVC pattern to touch on other areas of the Zend framework so in one sense the title for the section is slightly misleading. It is a very good introduction to a selection of the most important pieces of functionality present in the Zend framework though so I certainly wasn’t disappointed.

Finally the book moves on to touching on a variety of subjects you may be interested in. AJAX, web services and certificate authentication are all given some attention. The chapter on certificate authentication is freely available on the publishers website.

Star ratings are always difficult to get right but for me the content is an easy 4 stars, which I’m taking to mean recommended, and the writing a comfortable 5 stars.

A few leaves in the knowledge tree
Unfortunately, despite the exciting topics, this book ends up going nowhere. It reads like an introduction manual to a lot of technologies and concepts. A proper treatment of all the subjects in question would easily require 1000-1500 pages. For example:

Some parts of OOP and design patterns are covered within 50 pages. Compare and contrast with the 500 pages of "Objects, patterns, practice" by Matt Zandstra book and you can easily figure out how briefly the subject is treated.
The same treatment is applied to the Zend framework and to web services. The book just skims through introductory concepts, but never goes very deep into advanced aspects. You are left on your own with the online documentation to figure things out further.

However, I did enjoy the treatment of the Standard PHP Library and the chapter on SSL certificates.

I can’t imagine many people benefiting from this book, you are better off buying separate titles that deal more extensively with the subjects covered in this one.

Most Excellent Advanced Text
I have been developing web-based, database-driven applications for 12 years using Perl, Java, and, for the past 3 years, PHP. I was a late-comer to PHP because, quite frankly, its early iterations sucked. The committers finally got it right with 5.2 and 6.0 looks like they are staying on-track.

I went through any number of online tutorials and "Learn PHP in 24 Hours" books in the beginning and they were fine for "Hello World" applications. But as my need for sophistication rapidly grew, I found a distinct lack of good, readable texts that could function not only as tutorial but as reference as well. I went through a disappointing array of O’Reilly, Manning, Osborne, Addison-Wesley, etc. books, each of which lacked that crucial combination of clarity, accuracy, and scope. Then I happened to chance upon Apress’ publication of "Pro PHP Development."

I just finished reading "Pro PHP Development," and when I say I "finished reading" it, I mean exactly that - I read it cover-to-cover. Kevin McArthur has the uncommon talent of writing a technical manual in prose. Unassuming vernacular makes reading easy, instead of the more typical struggle with every idea and re-reading sentences and paragraphs after that "HUH???" experience forces wonder at the author’s point and intent. Concrete, concise, and useful examples demonstrate the textual subjects in clear unambiguous source code. And where appropriate and useful, McArthur introduces aspects of PHP 6.0. The coverage of some of the most useful objects in the SPL and the extensive treatment of the Zend MVC Framework is worth the price of admission in themselves.

In summary, "Pro PHP Development" is right up there with the finest technical literature I’ve read and has earned a place on my bookshelf (lesser texts get relegated to eBay). It’s a keeper. Until the next edition!

Mark Galbreath
Annapolis, MD

An Informative Book
This book focuses on some advanced technologies and latest developments related to php. The targeted readers are those who already know php programming but would like to know how to work with php in a way to adopt mainstream software and Internet development technologies.

For example, the book collectively describes about phpdoc, phpunit, xdebug, as well as subversion, phing, and xinc. The examples and steps provided in the book allow the reader to follow through relatively at ease. Nevertheless, the reader may want to know that all install and setup described in the book are based on Linux environment.

In the chapter of Reflection API, the reader will get a chance to study some use cases about this advanced extension that normally only java or C# programmers could enjoy through their build in language features today. The chapters about Standard PHP Library (SPL) give the reader the ideas of how to apply OOP libraries for php programming. For instance, instead of using a set of low-level file manipulative methods, the reader now might think about using SPLFileInfo object to represent and access file info. The book also covers some design techniques on php such as exception handling, MVC paradigm, and a few design patterns, which are informative.

The topics of Zend framework and Web 2.0 including ajax, web services, soap, and certificate authentication, provide a good entry point for those who want to know how to associate php to web design architecture and how php play its role within web deployment.

For about 300 pages, this book covers a lot of info. The topics are explained in a clear and straightforward manner for easier read. Additionally, the reader may find the writing is pretty concise in general and still leaves room for the reader to further investigate the issues outside the book. The companion download-able source code from the website is as expected and helpful.

Needless to say, some sections could be better organized. The Part 1 OOP and Patterns only list a few out of many common regarded patterns and OOP ideas, and other Parts of the book also mention some other patterns along their ways.

Overall, this book deserves a score 8 out 10 and should be as an eye opener and handy for those who like to see some advanced php subjects demonstrated in one place.

Awesome book
This is an awesome book, shame I didn’t get a mention in the credits and acknowledgements.

/me sporks StormTide