Product Description

"Practical PHP and MySQL reflects Jono's commitment to the spirit of making open source subjects accessible to everyone. The book carefully walks you through the code for eight useful, dynamic Web applications. Projects are presented in a playful way, like the forum project that touts horror movies that make you 'hide behind the couch.'"
-From the Foreword by Christopher Negus, Series Editor, Negus Live Linux Series

Build Dynamic Web Sites Fast, with PHP and MySQL...

Learn from Eight Ready-to-Run Applications!

Suddenly, it’s easy to build commercial-quality Web applications using free and open source software. With this book, you’ll learn from eight ready-to-run, real-world applications—all backed by clear diagrams and screenshots, well-documented code, and simple, practical explanations.

Leading open source author Jono Bacon teaches the core skills you’ll need to build virtually any application. You’ll discover how to connect with databases, upload content, perform cascading deletes, edit records, validate registrations, specify user security, create reusable components, use PEAR extensions, and even build Ajax applications.

Working from complete examples on the CD-ROM, you’ll create

• Generic dynamic Web sites
• Blogs
• Discussion forums
• Shopping carts
• Auction sites
• Calendars
• FAQ systems
• Reusable components
• Content management systems
• News sites

JONO BACON is Ubuntu community manager for Canonical, Ubuntu’s sponsor. He is an established speaker, author, and contributor to the open source community. Bacon co-authored Linux Desktop Hacks and The Official Ubuntu Book; has served as a columnist for Linux Format, Linux User & Developer, andPC Plus; and is an O’Reilly Networkweblog author. He is a lead developer onthe Jokosher (www.jokosher.org) project,and co-founder of LUGRadio—a podcastwith more than 15,000 listeners, andan annual event that attracts visitorsfrom around the world.

CD-ROM Includes

• XAMPP for Linux: easy-to-install, preconfigured Apache distributions containing MySQL, PHP, Perl, and more
• Source code for all eight fully-working applications discussed in the book
• A remastered Ubuntu live CD, set to run all eight applications live

System Requirements

• CPU: Pentium III, 650 MHz. RAM: 256MB (recommended 512MB).
• Hard disk: No space required to run live CD; 250MB of space needed to put XAMPP server and projects on installed system.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #470917 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 2
• Binding: Paperback
• 528 pages

From the Back Cover

"Practical PHP and MySQL reflects Jono's commitment to the spirit of making open source subjects accessible to everyone. The book carefully walks you through the code for eight useful, dynamic Web applications. Projects are presented in a playful way, like the forum project that touts horror movies that make you 'hide behind the couch.'"
-From the Foreword by Christopher Negus, Series Editor, Negus Live Linux Series

Build Dynamic Web Sites Fast, with PHP and MySQL...

Learn from Eight Ready-to-Run Applications!

Suddenly, it’s easy to build commercial-quality Web applications using free and open source software. With this book, you’ll learn from eight ready-to-run, real-world applications—all backed by clear diagrams and screenshots, well-documented code, and simple, practical explanations.

Leading open source author Jono Bacon teaches the core skills you’ll need to build virtually any application. You’ll discover how to connect with databases, upload content, perform cascading deletes, edit records, validate registrations, specify user security, create reusable components, use PEAR extensions, and even build Ajax applications.

Working from complete examples on the CD-ROM, you’ll create

• Generic dynamic Web sites
• Blogs
• Discussion forums
• Shopping carts
• Auction sites
• Calendars
• FAQ systems
• Reusable components
• Content management systems
• News sites

JONO BACON is Ubuntu community manager for Canonical, Ubuntu’s sponsor. He is an established speaker, author, and contributor to the open source community. Bacon co-authored Linux Desktop Hacks and The Official Ubuntu Book; has served as a columnist for Linux Format, Linux User & Developer, andPC Plus; and is an O’Reilly Networkweblog author. He is a lead developer onthe Jokosher (www.jokosher.org) project,and co-founder of LUGRadio—a podcastwith more than 15,000 listeners, andan annual event that attracts visitorsfrom around the world.

CD-ROM Includes

• XAMPP for Linux: easy-to-install, preconfigured Apache distributions containing MySQL, PHP, Perl, and more
• Source code for all eight fully-working applications discussed in the book
• A remastered Ubuntu live CD, set to run all eight applications live

System Requirements

• CPU: Pentium III, 650 MHz. RAM: 256MB (recommended 512MB).
• Hard disk: No space required to run live CD; 250MB of space needed to put XAMPP server and projects on installed system.

About the Author

Jono Bacon works for Canonical as the Ubuntu community manager and is an established speaker, author, and regular contributor to the Open Source community. As an author, Bacon co-authored Linux Desktop Hacks and the Official Ubuntu Book, and has written more than 400 published articles in more than 14 publications. Bacon has also contributed as a columnist for Linux Format, Linux User & Developer, and PC Plus, and is an O’Reilly Network weblog author.

In addition, Bacon is a regular contributor to Open Source in a range of projects, a lead developer on the Jokosher (www.jokosher.org) project, and one of the co-founders of the popular LUGRadio (www.lugradio.org) podcast–a show with more than 15,000 listeners and an annual event that pulls visitors from around the world.

Customer Reviews

unusable
Great concept - lousy execution.
The book is well laid out and has a good balance between screen shots, code and explanation. It also contains a whole development environment on the cd and supplies (nearly) all of the code contained in the book. And this makes it all the more frustrating. Because, unless you are an expert in this field (and presumably if you are you would not need this book), the book is unusable (except as a source of heat once it is set alight) beyond the first application (building a weblog).

The first third is FULL to the brim with substantial code errors (not to mention typos and CSS errors). As mentioned, I managed to work around the errors in the first application, but within a couple of pages of the second there were so many that I had to give up on this, and move onto the third (building a shopping cart). Here I did get to the end of the chapter and most of the code seemed to work, but enough of it did not for the application to be unusable. In fact, one of the files that should be supplied (register.php) is missing, and not just from the disk - there is no mention of it anywhere in the book! And it definitely should exist, because it is referenced in the text as a link.

So in the first 3 applications, 2 cannot be built and 1 can only if you are able to muddle through the code and fix the errors - not really good enough.

If online support was available to clean up the code and make the book fit for purpose then the above could (perhaps) be tolerated, but it is not.

Wasted too much time already - off to find a replacement. Pants.

Informative and really useful
I highly recommended this book as it has something in it for everyone, from seasoned PHP programmers to those just getting started with PHP and MySQL.

Written in a clear yet relaxed and entertaining style, it's both easy to skim through for that nudge in the right direction or to delve into the nitty gritty of a particular style of project, of which there is an impressively diverse range of projects to look at. It leads by examples, screenshots, easy to follow database diagrams and much more. From recipes and detailed code snippets, to explanations of the approaches taken and issues faced, this book would be a useful addition to a lot of PHP/MySQL related reading lists out there.

The bootable CD is also a very nice touch and well worth taking a look around as it required absolutely no installation to do so, perfect for demonstrating the projects as you follow them in the book.

Useful AND useable!
A very useable book, that seems to give examples of things that are actually useable - sometimes a rarity in books of this kind.

Definetly a useful addition to my collection.