Product Description

Core PHP Programming, Second Edition is the first complete, practical guide to PHP 4 for experienced Web developers. Fully updated to reflect PHP 4.0's breakthrough features and performance, it covers every technique you need to build robust, fast Web applications. Leading PHP developer Leon Atkinson starts with a high-level overview of PHP: how it evolved, and how it appears to the developer. Next, Atkinson reviews the key building blocks of PHP scripts, including variables, operators, and expressions; conditional branches and loops. Review every PHP function, including I/O, data, and math functions; time, date, configuration, database, graphics, and network functions. Core PHP Programming, Second Edition also contains detailed coverage of effective program design and debugging. For all Web developers and system administrators.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1475112 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 769 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Revised for PHP version 4, the new edition of Core PHP Programming is a comprehensive tutorial and reference to one of today's hottest scripting languages. Part tutorial and part reference, this book will get beginners started with PHP, as well as provide a convenient desktop resource for more experienced PHP developers.

Early sections show what PHP is and how it works, with basic data types, flow control, and other topics you'll need to get started. But the heart of the book is a full reference to PHP 4 functions. Organised by topic, this text provides over 400 pages of reference to several hundred PHP calls, along with a description of what they do. Clearly organised and presented, this book will help you find what you need quickly (instead of relying on PHP's often cumbersome online help). In particular, readers will appreciate the coverage of database functions, including the separate calls for MySQL, ODBC, and Oracle. You'll also see what PHP can do with XML.

The last part of the book reverts to tutorial mode, first with a section on algorithms that discusses ways to sort and search PHP arrays. Final sections look at some strategies you can use to integrate PHP into the software design process, in which the strategies of combining HTML content with dynamic PHP scripts are shown. There is also useful advice for increasing performance with PHP. (It would seem that upgrading to PHP 4 is a must, because the new version offers a real performance boost.)

PHP is clearly a popular choice for Web applications today. If you buy just one book on PHP, consider Core PHP Programming. It offers an approachable tutorial that will put basic PHP script development into the hands of beginners, and provides a useful reference for everyday development once you've gotten a handle on how to use it. --Richard Dragan

From the Publisher
summary and table of contents
This book is a guide to programming in PHP, a server-side scripting language primarily designed for use with the Apache web server. PHP is a high-level, C-like scripting language that is designed to be embedded in HTML pages. Unlike Javascript and jscript. PHP is not browser dependent. A CD-ROM with all source code and compiled versions of the Apache Server will be included.

CONTENTS

Preface.

I. PROGRAMMING WITH PHP.

1. An Introduction to PHP. 2. Variables, Operators, and Expressions. 3. Control Statements. 4. Functions. 5. Arrays. 6. Classes. 7. I/O and Disk Access.

II. FUNCTIONAL REFERENCE.

8. I/O Functions. 9. Data Functions. 10. Mathematical Functions. 11. Time, Date, and Configuration Functions. 12. Image Functions. 13. Database Functions.

III. ALGORITHMS.

14. Sorting, Searching, and Random Numbers. 15. Parsing and String Evaluation. 16. Database Integration. 17. Generating Graphics.

IV. SOFTWARE ENGINEERING.

18. Integration with HTML. 19. Design. 20. Efficiency and Debugging. Appendix A. Backslash Codes. Appendix B. ASCII Codes. Appendix C. Operators. Appendix D. PHP Tags. Appendix E. Installing PHP. Index.

From the Author
Core PHP Programming is for Novices and Experts alike!
Before I had the idea to write a book about PHP, every few days I would read a message on the PHP mailing list and be surprised with some new, amazing feature. It began to dawn on me that what I needed, what I craved, was to know the complete story of PHP. So, true to the RTFM principle, I delved into the online documentation. While most of the functionality was documented, it was fairly sparse. My colleagues with less programming experience weren't finding it terribly approachable.

I wrote a few descriptions for the undocumented functions, and I might have remained content. But slowly the idea to write my own manual began to take shape after learning that Prentice Hall was interested in recruiting authors. Could I, never having written anything longer than a college term paper, actually put together a 500-page technical reference? I was willing to try! Whatever happened, it would be a great adventure. Plus, I would be able to contribute to PHP's growing prosperity.

I set about studying the structures of some of my favorite computer books. I also considered the different reasons why anyone would buy a book about PHP. First, there were people like me who would find it useful to have a physical reference to leave open on a desk. The reason I put the functional reference in chapters eight through thirteen is so that the weight of the surrounding chapters would help keep the book open.

I also considered that most of the people asking questions on the PHP mailing list started their messages like "I just found PHP today! It's great, but how do I..." Some of these people would benefit from a primer on programming. Others just needed recipes for common coding problems. I chose to spend the first seven chapters of the book discussing programming concepts (operators, variables, functions) in the context of PHP. I also included several chapters dealing with common programming problems such as sorting and graphics production.

And of course, I included lots of examples. Sometimes a code snippet can tell more than several paragraphs. But I did my best to use realistic examples. Many of the examples in the book are based on code from some of the projects I've worked on.

PHP is proof that the Open Source concept is how software ought to be. No one pays for PHP, but many people are making money because it exists. This book and others are perhaps the smallest part. PHP helps sell other software such as RedHat Linux and Apache Stronghold. And I can't count the number of times it has allowed me to create Web applications with less effort than with other server-side technologies.

Customer Reviews

Bottom line - Toatally glad I bought it.
I bought this book even after reading a mixture of negative and a few positive reviews, and am so glad I did. I had many questions about PHP and correct syntax that the online manual simply did not answer - this book does answer them, and a lot more.

Without this book I would have spent a lot of time submitting questions to mailing lists and waiting for answers. For example, if; elseif; else; is explained and an example is provided that makes it so easy to understand, the first time I used it it worked perfectly first time. This is a fairly basic example, but the book contains so many useful examples and real- useable ones too. The important thing is, I had never used if,elseif,else before to build a dynamic web page, and after reading the example in this book, it worked FIRST TIME!

As a result of this book being on my desk for a week I have transformed one site from a mass of pages to an application with a smaller number of actual pages that respond to users' clicks appropriately - thanks to a better understanding of PHP.

Tie in the examples in this book with the stability of the UNIX server, mySQL and PHP3 and you're on to a winner.

If you even think you need this book, I would say buy it! But then, the choice is yours.

Good, good, good
Very well written book. Detailed, well organised good for rookies and for pros. My only concern (that's why one missing star) is about the not totally complete coverage of PHP programming issues (some topics missing). Anyway a very good book.

Get up to speed fast with this exciting language
If your looking to get up to speed with PHP and are reasonably comfortable with C or C++ then this is your answer. From getting the distribution of PHP compiled (on Linux) or just installed (Windows) you will be admiring your first working scripts within the hour.

Somehow Mr Atkinson weaves straight, comprehensive information directly into an interesting prose. The reference sections have been thorough enough for me to get my work done without questions going unanswered.

With comprehensive coverage of the major database management systems available you will be able to confidently put together your DBMS powered Web Site in no time.

My only suggestion for the third edition would be a more comprehensive index to the function reference sections as you sometimes have to guess how a function would be classified before you can identify it.

Altogether a very good package from Leon Atkinson, who is a active contributor to the PHP movement.

Note to the Author: What we need now is a cook book!