PHP Cookbook: Solutions and Examples for PHP Programmers 2nd Edition

I'm not a web guru; but got stuck with converting a Javascript, Java Server Pages, Oracle website I designed years ago to PHP, et al. So I armed myself with the PHP Cookbook, PHP and MySQL Web Development and Mastering phpMyAdmin3.1 and gingerly stepped into battle. When I received the books in the mail and began reading, the PHP Cookbook damaged by brain, so it was placed on the self to collect dust and I dug into PHP and MySQL Web Development to begin experimenting. It didn't take too long to decide to use the Object Oriented PHP paradigm for implementation. Once that decision was made and I had programmed a few pieces of the puzzle, I dusted off the PHP Cookbook and took another look at it. I found the Cookbook to be a truly amazing piece of work. These authors know what the reader is looking for, know how to organize the material, and leave few bases uncovered. Take, for example the 'Receipe' 9.7 "Validating Form Input: Checkboxes". In the section on "Discussion" the authors state "For PHP to handle multiple checkbox values properly, the checkboxes' name attribute must end with [ ],.....Those multiple values are formatted in $_POST as an array. Since the checkbox name in ......is food[ ], $_POST[ 'food' ] holds the array of values from the checked boxes." End of story. This is exactly what the programmer needs to know to process the checkbox form input. I am finding this book to be an excellent reference. The reader, of course, needs some experience before tearing into this book; but it could be bought at any point during the implementation process and set aside as a valued reference. Web development gurus (you know who you are) may find this book lacking; but being on the short side of being a guru, I give the book 4 1/2 stars. I downgrade it 1/2 star since it didn't come with a companion CD, which I always like to have to facilitate quick searches of the material.

PHP is intended for rapid web development, and it does not take that long to get comfortable with the language itself. However, it is a fairly flexible language, which allows for several ways to do the same thing but perhaps one way is definitely better than others; it takes time to learn the best practices. With PHP, it is easy to produce spaghetti codes if you are not careful, while it is certainly possible to make very solid object-oriented systems as well. The best way to learn in the end is to read a lot of well-written codes by capable, programmers with experiences, but for a developer who needs to code tons of stuff and has pressure to meet deadlines, time is precious. That is why this book is useful.Much of PHP is specially designed for web development, so the book includes a lot of essential topics dealing with web development: XML, security, dealing with form data, i18n and l10n, database, and so on. In software development, new releases are norm, and some topics discussing actively developed modules do show their ages at times. However, there are still a lot you can learn from the standard O'Reilly quality book, rather than collecting hodge podge of information available on the web.If you know some other language already and have read one or two introductory PHP web development book already, this will be the most used book on the shelve about PHP. This book and the official online documentation gets you quite far. In my case this has been easily the most used PHP book.

I bought about 25-30 PHP/MySQL books while learning & this was easily one of my top 5 most used. Programming PHP (Oreilly) and PHP 5 in Practice (Developer's Library) are also pretty solid. If you're ready for MySQL, replace the latter with PHP and MySQL Web Development (4th Edition, Developer's Library). I also found the Apress books fairly helpful. Definitely get the Cookbook, though. You'll reference it whenever you code.

I'm coming to PHP with a strong background in Perl and this book is perfect for me. In my mind, I know what I'd do in Perl to handle a given situation. With PHP Cookbook, all I need do is turn to the table of contents, find the section I need, and there's the solution. The code is well written and the descriptions very useful.

Haven't used this much. But it's fascinating. Just another book that ages quickly.

I have been slowly learning PHP at home for years, this book has been really helpful already. Many good solutions to common needs for PHP scripts. Saves me googling for a good 'recipe' and hoping I get a good one, I can trust these recipes are really good using the best and easiest methods.

Chaos through out the book, just splashed out code bits and no good/understandable index. Hoped for better, since the series usually are good.

(My review refers to the 2003 edition).This book has loads of information about stuff you do on a normal basis with PHP, including XML parsing, form processing, string and array manipulation, etc. I think the book is well written and indexed with good examples, but I think you won't get much more information than the PHP user manual.In my opinion PHP has better free user documentation than all the other languages I use on a regular basis (Java, Ruby and PERL). You can download their user manual and PEAR manual in a whole bunch of formats, including CHM, which gives you the ability to browse it like any other Windows help file (which gives you the ability to search). Most of the points in this book are covered in the same depth in the PHP user manual and you don't have to pay for it.