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PHP @ Web Programming
Programming Shed : Programmer Store & Resources |
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PHP Index - PHP Book :
SAMS Teach Yourself PHP4 in 24 Hours (Teach Yourself -- 24 Hours)
by Matt Zandstra Paperback Publisher: Sams ISBN: 0672318040; 1 edition (June 23, 2000) A tutorial of 24 lessons on PHP4, an open source Web scripting language. No prior experience of programming is assumed, although some understanding of the Web and of HTML is useful. Part I introduces PHP4, and Part II covers basic features of any language. Part III covers PHP4 in more detail, looking at functions and techniques for programming, and Part IV presents a complete example. Includes summaries, quizes, and activities. Zandstra runs a Web design company and has developed software in PHP.Book News, Inc.®, Portland, OR Book Description: Consisting of 24 one-hour lessons, Sams Teach Yourself PHP4 in 24 Hours is divided into five sections that guide you through the language from the basics to the advanced functions. The first section of the book teaches the fundamentals of PHP. Building upon what has been taught in the first section, sections two through four show you how to apply that knowledge in order to interact with the user by creating and managing forms, cookies and authentication. It also teaches how to access databases and how to integrate system components, e-mail, LDAP, network sockets and much more. The final section of the book covers advanced functionality including how to debug and optimize scripts, maintain script security, and extend PHP with API. Customer Reviews Reviewer: Steve Hernandez from Chicago, Illinois After learning the basics of c++, I decided to learn PHP. Rather than learning it visually and having it explained in person (as I did in programming class), I knew I would have to rely on a book. After browsing through a few books, I quickly realized that "Sams Teach Yourself PHP4 in 24 Hours" would give me all I needed to know to help create a backend for my website. It explains in excellent detail about arrays, functions, dynamic image creation, interaction with MySQL realational databases, and everything else that is essential to a PHP programmer. I can honestly say that whenever I need to know "how to do this", I can refer to the book and get the answer I need. If you're new to PHP, then this is the book for you. If you're not, then this is still an ideal choice for reference. Reviewer: mason from jackson, ms i know that Sams Publishing is often synonymous with the word "lame" (their Mandrake book comes to mind...), but this book is suprisingly good. probably not to difficult for new programmers(just make sure you know some html first!), but for anyone with prior programming experience (especially C++), this book is a breeze. it's straight forward and gets to the meaty content fairly quickly. the mySql sections provide clear and helpful info, however the examples aren't anything spectacular, and few of them really seem to jump out as actually useful, so much of the creative aspect of php scripting is left up to the reader. good book thats alot easier to flip through than the official manual at php.net Reviewer: Nathan from Phoenix, AZ USA Don't get me wrong, it's a good book, technically sound, and well organized. In fact I recommend it to anyone with some programming and HTML background. But how HARD is it to write a book free from errors??!! Some of the errors are just irritating typos, but some are far more dangerous. In a few places I was actually taught a concept incorrectly (evil of evils!!), and was only set straight later in the book when the author actually taught it correctly. I don't think this guy actually went back and reviewed his own book, if he had, he'd have caught the errors. sorry for negativity, it's a good book, but I hate errors, especially when they occur a lot in a programming book. Reviewer: Erik Fleischer from Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil PLUSES The book is very well organized in 24 chapters that are supposed to take roughly one hour each to cover. While the earlier chapters take no more than 20 minutes or so, the later ones may take a little more than one hour if you actually intend to "digest" their contents. On average, I guess it takes you about an hour per chapter. The coverage of PHP also seems to be quite good (although I am not an advanced programmer and therefore cannot not be totally sure about that). I can't think of anything I might one day like to do with PHP that I didn't find somewhere in the book. True enough, locating this information is not always very easy, but with a little effort you'll end up finding it. Finally, the layout is not only appealing but also makes the book easy to use. MINUSES The blurb on the back cover is a bit too ambitious: it promises you'll "learn how to ... setup a secure PHP environment ... create dynamic charts and graphics on your web pages ... create dynamic web applications using PHP." Well, I guess you might if you read the book four or five times and spent lots of time studying each chapter. Otherwise, I don't think you'll be going quite so far. While the author writes clearly enough, he sometimes uses a string of technical terms that you're supposed to have memorized. Problem is, sometimes you don't remember them all, and if the context doesn't help, you get lost. Take this sentence as an example: "When you pass arguments to functions they are stored as copies in parameter variables." I had to go back to several different pages to remind myself what the difference between "parameters" and "arguments" was, and also what the heck "parameter variables" was supposed to mean. I think sometimes the author assumes that you'll remember every single new term that is introduced, and he'll be using them to introduce yet another new term in a couple of pages. For programmers with some previous experience that may be okay, but not for novices like me. Some of the explanations of important new concepts are just barely mentioned in the text and then actually introduced in an example. However, most of the examples consist of a chunk of code without any mention as to what this code will output to the browser or file or whatever, so you just have to guess what will come out as a result. Now, if you're still trying to understand what a particular chunk of code will do, it would help to see what it would result in. More screenshots of code output to a browser, for example, would have helped a lot. There are also quite a few misprints: double closing parentheses where there should only be one, misplaced line numbers in the middle of the code, etc. Misprints in text are not so serious, because you understand the "code" (i.e. the language) well enough that you can make sense out of it. But misprints in the PHP code that you're trying to learn can be very confusing. All of a sudden you find this "10:" in the middle of a line of code, and by the time you've figured out that it's the number of the next line that has somehow wound up in the middle of the previous line, you've wasted ten minutes of your time. |
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