Product Description

PHP and MySQL are popular open-source technologies that are ideal for quickly developing database-driven Web applications. PHP is a powerful scripting language designed to enable developers to create highly featured Web applications quickly, and MySQL is a fast, reliable database that integrates well with PHP and is suited for dynamic Internet-based applications.

PHP and MySQL Web Development shows how to use these tools together to produce effective, interactive Web applications. It clearly describes the basics of the PHP language, explains how to set up and work with a MySQL database, and then shows how to use PHP to interact with the database and the server.

This practical, hands-on book includes numerous examples that demonstrate common tasks such as authenticating users, constructing a shopping cart, generating PDF documents and images dynamically, sending and managing email, facilitating user discussions, connecting to Web services using XML, and developing Web 2.0 applications with Ajax-based interactivity.

The fourth edition of PHP and MySQL Web Development has been thoroughly updated, revised, and expanded to cover developments in PHP 5 through version 5.3, such as namespaces and closures, as well as features introduced in MySQL 5.1.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36589 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 2
• Binding: Paperback
• 1008 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
PHP and MySQL Web Development introduces readers (who are assumed to have little or no experience with the title subjects) to PHP and MySQL for the purpose of creating dynamic Internet sites. It teaches the same skills as introductory Active Server Pages (ASP) and ColdFusion books--technologies which address the same niche.

Authors Luke Welling and Laura Thomson's technique aims to get readers going on their own projects as soon as possible. They present easily digestible sections on specific technical processes--"Accessing Array Contents" and "Using Encryption with PHP" are two examples. Each section centres on a sample program that strips the task at hand down to its essentials, enabling the reader to fit the process into his or her own solutions as required. Tables that list options and other nuggets of reference material appear as well, but the many examples and the authors' commentary on them take centre stage.

For reference material on MySQL, have a look at Paul DuBois's MySQL. On the PHP side, Web Application Development with PHP4 is excellent. --David Wall

Topics covered:

• The MySQL Database Server (for both Unix and Windows)
• Accessing MySQL Databases Through PHP Scripting (the letters don't really stand for anything)
• Database Creation and Modification
• PHP Tricks in Order of Increasing Complexity--everything from basic SQL queries to secure transactions for commerce
• Authentication
• Network Connectivity
• Session Management
• Content Customisation

Review
“This book by Welling & Thomson is the
only one which I have found to be indispensable.
The writing is clear and straightforward
but never wastes my time.The book is
extremely well laid out.The chapters are the
right length and chapter titles quickly take
you where you want to go.”
—Wright Sullivan, President,A&E
Engineering, Inc., Greer South Carolina

“There are several good introductory
books on PHP, but Welling & Thomson is an
excellent handbook for those who wish to
build up complex and reliable systems. It’s
obvious that the authors have a strong background
in the development of professional
applications and they teach not only
the language itself, but also how to use it
with good software engineering practices.”
—Javier Garcia, senior telecom engineer,
Telefonica R&D Labs, Madrid

“This book rocks! I am an experienced
programmer, so I didn’t need a lot of help
with PHP syntax; after all, it’s very close to
C/C++. I don’t know a thing about
databases, though, so when I wanted to
develop a book review engine (among
other projects) I wanted a solid reference
to using MySQL with PHP. I have
O’Reilly’s mSQL and MySQL book, and
it’s probably a better pure-SQL reference,
but this book has earned a place on my
reference shelf…Highly recommended.”
—Paul Robichaux

“The true PHP/MySQL bible, PHP
and MySQL Web Development by Luke
Welling and Laura Thomson, made me
realize that programming and databases are
now available to the commoners. Again, I
know 1/10000th of what there is to know,
and already I’m enthralled.”
—Tim Luoma,TnTLuoma.com

From the Author
"Practical, effective, and cool"
When we set about writing this book, we aimed to write a book that we would like. We set out to write a book containing lots of realistic examples.

Most of the PHP books we purchased had some excellent chapters, but then devoted half of their length to a function reference. This book is nearly 900 pages long, and by not including another function reference, there was room for plenty of examples.

The book is divided into five parts. The first goes through basic language and programming concepts fairly quickly. We look at files, strings, arrays, regular expressions, code reuse and Object Oriented programming.

Part two deals with MySQL, we start with concepts, cover common queries and move on to advanced topics such as security and optimisation.

Part three deals with e-commerce and security. We look at threats, common ways of mitigating risk and how to implement security features using PHP. Topics include using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and authentication.

Part four is called Advanced PHP Techniques. It contains information on interacting with other parts of the server, or the network, dealing with date and time in various formats, generating images on the fly and using session control.

We think that the book's greatest selling point are the project chapters in part five. Each of these covers one realistic application in detail, with complete source code and discussion of why it was written that way, what compromises where made, and suggestions on ways to modify or extend the applications. The projects are: a bookmark system to demonstrate automatically personalising a site to your user's interests, a shopping cart, a content management system, a web based email service, a mailing list manager, a discussion forum, and a PDF document generation system.

Bill Camarda, a reviewer at a rival book store, described PHP and MySQL Web Development, as "Practical, effective, and cool."

We hope you get as much out of this book as we put into it.

Customer Reviews

Excellent book for beginner to intermediate programmer!!!!!!
I found this book very comprehensive. It contained everything that I needed to cover in order to create a dynamic web site that encorporated a database back end from scratch. It did this in a way that I found others lacking. Instead of tackling the basics of each topic (ie. how to use a function), it expresses the way of using the PHP etc, in a useful, productive, clear and effective manner. Personally, I found this one of its most attractive features.

As a person who does not like to read (student at university) I have to compliment the authors on that fact that it managed to keep my attention long enough to cover 50% in just one day, and it isn't a thin book either! In a single day I managed to comprehend PHP's language syntax and semantics enough to encorporate it with mySQL to produce a dynamic, database driven web page.

This book is fantastic!

However, I do have do agree with another review written regarding installation and configuration of the technologies used. Appendix A (that covers this topic) is a little sketchy and I do think that a person fresh to this topic may find it a little difficult to tackle; as the instructions inside the book are not 100% accurate.

The way to learn PHP
Thid book is the best way to learn php I have encountered. After spending over £100 on books, the one i ended up learning something from was this book. Covers everything from the basics to the more advanced aspects of php. Ony bad thing is that it assumes a bit to much that you have access to php 5. But if you don't you can just skip those parts of the book, for now.
A must have if you wanna learn php.

Well written, but too simple for advanced programmers.
I was somewhat disappointed with this book. Although it cannot be denied that the text is well-written throughout, I was frustrated by the lack of code examples. The book is also squared firmly at the beginner PHP programmer who wants to move to a move intermediate level. I would disagree with the publishers who suggest the book is suitable for intermediate to advanced programmers- people at this level would best avoid this book as there is it contains nothing you couldn't learn from searching around the net for 5 minutes.

In summary then; a good book if you are starting PHP and want to move into making solid web applications. However, steer clear if you consider yourself at least an intermediate PHP programmer- there will be nothing in this book that you won't already know.