Rating: 
Summary: The BIBLE for Serious PHP/MySQL Developer
Review: Since 1997, I have been developing dynamic Open Source-based web sites for my clients and myself. I have settled on two solutions: Zope sites using its incorporated ZODB -- for which I suggest the Zope Bible -- and PHP/MySQL sites, for which I recommend this one-stop solution, PHP and MySQL Web Development, Second Edition. I had the first edition, and that was my bible until this edition came out recently. If you need one book, and your solution for creating powerful web applications is PHP/MySQL, then this is the book for you. I am the president and lead developer for zdev Corporation. We at zdev develop Content Management Solutions using Open Source solutions. Half the solutions are Zope-based, including Plone; otherwise, our solutions are most often Nuke-based -- namely Post Nuke and phpWebsite -- which are PHP/MySQL solutions.Although amazingly powerful, PHP has been attacked as being an insecure solution. This presumption is based on many things that have been fixed and blocked in the evolution of PHP; but there is always coder-error and this fine resources focuses almost exclusively on helping the coder take what started out as Personal Home Page (PHP) which was the main solution for script kiddies and 14-year-old freaks and geeks to what it has become and what it can be: The finest and most flexible solution for any and all commercial and e-commerce solutions. In accomplishing this, this book focuses on becoming a careful, ever-vigilant, coder of PHP. This education includes many remedial courses in dealing with having a database-backed website on the Internet, which has nothing to do with PHP or MySQL. In my humble opinion, the reputation that PHP has as an insecure solution is based on it being a perfect "teaching language" and as such, many newbies and neophytes are empowered to deploy some powerful solutions without being first formally informed in the issues of data integrity and online-security. As our coder-base matures -- along with the language(s) -- we will see that the problems had nothing to do with the power and elegance of the code, but rather with the newness, freedom, accessibility, and immaturity of many of our colleagues, the coders ourselves. In much the same way the Ben Forta book on Cold Fusion years ago legitimized Cold Fusion as THE solution for the web -- towards the Enterprise level -- Luke Welling and Laura Thomson's book, PHP and MySQL Web Development is on its way towards bringing PHP and MySQL the kind of attention and legitimacy it deserves. Every day I see more and more Corporate-level and Enterprise-level solutions on the web and am oftentimes blown away by its ubiquity on the web. The next time you are on a site you love, check out the file-types of the pages you are visiting. If you see .php anywhere in the URL, you have discovered yet another PHP site! I recommend you buy this book. It will be the only one you'll need.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book - poor publishing (1st & 2nd edition)
Review: * Note: I refer here to both the first and second edition * This is the book I purchased to get started on server-side scripting; it probably says "user-level intermediate-advanced" to avoid lawsuits; I had no prior knowledge of server-side programming, and no trouble understanding. It is divided in four logical parts:
(1) PHP tutorial
(2) MySQL tutorial
(3) General discussion on server-side scripting & e-commerce (very interesting)
(4) Projects This book does an excellent job at explaining PHP & MySQL to the beginner, and goes much beyond the frustrating "intermediate" level where similar books often stop. It assumes a working knowledge of HTML, which everyone interested in this book already has in all likelihood. It is cleverly written, clear and concise. The authors share their extensive experience with the reader, notably in the third part where common pitfalls are discussed. The index is well done, which makes this book an excellent desktop reference in addition to being a good tutorial. The CD contains all the code for the examples, the complete book in searchable PDF, and other goodies like the Apache Server and PHP. My recommendation: go to phpide.de and download PHPTriad to install & configure Apache/PHP/MySQL on your PC, or have someone knowledgeable do it manually for you to avoid headaches. The only reason I can't give five stars to the first or second edition is the number of mistakes/typos in the code examples. The upload code doesn't work, PDF generation uses obsolete functions even in the second edition, etc. Although most of the code supplied as example functions properly, it is annoying to know that a book written to teach you to program contains errors in the programming examples. The second edition adds a chapter about XML and removes outdated URLs. Otherwise, it is the same book (including code typos). Combined with the PHP & MySQL manuals available for download from their respective sites, allow a week or two of reading and you should have everything needed to start working. All things considered, I strongly recommend this book. PS: if your heart balances between ASP & PHP for server-side, consider that more servers are PHP-enabled, since it is cheaper (free).
If you want to stay in known terrain and use JScript, than go for ASP.
Rating: 
Summary: Not A Rewarding Experience
Review:
The book appears to be very informative; the contents seem to cover PHP and MySQL quite extensively. Using the book's directions to set up PHP (from the included CD) however, has been fruitless. I was able to install MySQL and Apache on my W2K box quite easily. The instructions for installing and configuring MySQL were easy to follow. Testing MySQL revealed a successful installation. Setting up Apache was a breeze. The directions were clear and easy to follow. The Apache Web server also tested successfully. I expected that installing PHP would be a no-brainer as well. The book recommends a manual installation, but when describing the automatic install, isn't clear that it's an either-or choice. I ignored the automatic setup and proceeded with the manual installation. The manual process involves unzipping PHP and copying the PHP folder to the root of drive C. The next ambiguous step was choosing between the CGI or ISAPI implementation of PHP. The differences were explained, and the authors indicated either would work. I chose the ISAPI option, which involved copying an apache/ISAPI DLL to the root PHP folder. There was no mention whether you needed to disable, rename or remove the CGI's DLL, also in the PHP root. I left it in place. The next step involved creating C:\USR\, moving and copying files there and to C:\WINNT\, C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\, the Apache HTDOCS folder and then editing a couple files. The \USR folder instructions caught me by surprise. I also use RedHat and know the USR directory is specific to Linux. At first I wondered if this was a cut/paste error. The authors could have indicated that the USR directory, native to Linux, is necessary on the Windows PC for compatibility reasons. The C:\WINNT\PHP.INI file required specifying a couple paths to PHP folders. The examples in the book were inconsistent - The first showed a path without quotes surrounding it, the second entry, on the following page, did have quotes. I was able to look through the existing entries in the INI file to determine that quotes were being used. I used quotes too. Editing the Apache CONFIG file was confusing as the book used path examples with conflicting slashes (C:/PHP/ and C:\PHP\). The file had examples that Windows entries should use the back-slash. There were also three entries to append to the file for CGI option. Again, the book did not indicate that they should not be inserted if you are using the ISAPI module. After restarting the Apache service, the PHP test page (PHPINFO) would initiate a file download in the browser. If run from the HTDOCS folder, it would display a blank page. I repeated the steps of the installation, then installed (very carefully) on a second W2K machine. All efforts produced the same results. At this point I opened the README that came with PHP. It appears that the authors's instructions for installing PHP are pretty much a copy/paste from the PHP readme. BUT, the readme included information that the slashes in the Apache CONFIG file are irrelevant, they could be mixed without impact (C:/PROGRAM FILES\APACHE GROUP/HTDOCS\). Regarding the three additional (CGI mode) lines in the PHP.INI recommended by the book - the readme has the same information, but indicates that it would be "suicidal to use them". That's as far as I made it last night. I'll continue working on it over the weekend, but will look at third party docs for a definitive reference. While I'm new to PHP, I've been in the IT field more than fifteen years. I grew up on DOS 3.3, saw QEMM come and go, could write CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC's from memory, host a dozen domains and code VB and HTML on a daily basis. The inability to get past the installation process is frustrating. Buying a highly endorsed book on PHP that contradicts itself, and the docs included on the CD, is especially disappointing. Since my purchase, I have seen reviews that reference incorrect code in the body of the book. If these reports are true, I'd have to second-guess each error I encounter. Coding and math share the same rule, either it's correct, or it's not. The reason I chose "one star" is for the lapse in "attention to detail" I have found in documenting what should be a painless start. While I'll have PHP up and running soon, first-time coders may not be so successful. I hope the authors will post corrections to errors discovered in this book and provide a link to that site somehow. I'm looking forward to learning PHP as I continue through this book, but would like to correct the errors before getting to them.
Rating: 
Summary: Good for Beginners but Buggy Code
Review: This was one of my first PHP/MySQL books, which I purchased after reading some recommendations. In general, it was a pretty good introduction and easy to understand. However, I took off one star because I ran into several bugs in the presented code. There isn't *that* much code that someone couldn't have tried it all again before publication. I spent some time pulling my hair out before I fixed the bugs and got the code to work. Perhaps this was fixed in the second edition, I don't know.
Rating:
Summary: Could be better
Review: As a newbie I found the book explanatory (theory wise) but my frustration stem from the fact that the codes are full of errors and thus made the whole practical part very frustrating. If only the authors could please re-read the book and make necessary corrections.
Rating:
Summary: I like this book
Review: I am a self-taught web developer. I've got quite a collection of books. So I'm picky about writing style and good teaching techniques. (i.e.: hate 'friend's of ed') I learned the basics of Php from Wrox beginning Php and professional Php, but didn't get to finish the later because of having to use Php on a project that lasted over a year. I use the Php manual all of the time, but I am also using this book to find some of the details I may have missed and more elegant techniques I want to learn. So far I really like it. I can skim the stuff I know about and take note of some things I need to get better at. I do think that if you were a complete rookie, a beginner book before this one would be helpful. This book reads well and is very clear with good teaching techniques.
Rating:
Summary: Great book, very useful
Review: This book is definitely worth the money. I've been looking for one reference teaching me how to use PHP and MySQL together effectively. This wasn't over my head or too basic, but told me the practical stuff I need to know, and answered a lot of questions I had about how to use these products together. I haven't read through the whole thing, but haven't found code errors yet, so I'm not sure what that other review is talking about.
Rating:
Summary: Buy First Ed, don't buy this one
Review: I simply just lost my money. Having had a lot of success with the first edition, i went on to buy this book in the hope that i could pick up more tricks to help hone my web development skills.
First, i as a customer, thought the cover of the book sucked - why would a SAMS book have a New Riders cover..ok! i thought i shouldn't be all that sensitive and tried to get beyond teh cover story, only to find to my harrowing experience that the code in the book has several errors. I wrote in despair to the suport team at the publisher's and i have not met with any response till date - are they ashamed that they have sold me a mediocre product? I had faith in the SAMS brand, and esp the authors but i want to say in my individual capacity that i have simply been cheated.
I don't want your book, you can simply have it back.
Rating:
Summary: Best book on PHP/MySQL for beginners - intermed
Review: This book is simply great. I read the first edition about 10 months ago when I was a total beginner to PHP and MySQL (although I had taken a database course and knew some Java). This book basically got me up to speed on how to program in PHP. What's better, my database skills were packed with a lot of theory and not too much practical application and this book had a chapter that gave an excellent overview of general database concepts. The first half of the book--basically teaching you PHP and MySQL--is great on its own. But then the 2nd half is excellent, too. They have tutorials on how to program the most common web applications: a shopping cart, a message board system, a content management system. I used this book as my primary referecne when developing my first versions of a content management system and e-commerce system and the results turned out quite well. It's a shame that no one has reviewed the 2nd edition of this book because if you look at the Amazon.com entry for the first edition, you'll see it received over 100 reviews giving it 4.5 stars. One word of caution about this book: they seem to forget to mention the concept of superglobals, but just look it up through Google and you'll easily get up to speed. Also, for advanced users, this book might be a decent reference but is probably a little too elementary. Maybe Professional PHP4 might be better for advanced users, although that book has some problems of its own.
Rating:
Summary: This book versus the new O'Reilly one
Review: I bought this a few months back and I found it useful getting started with PHP and MySQL. The problem, though, is that it doesn't go far enough: the material on PDF doesn't actually show you how to write a report from a database or get anything installed, there's almost nothing on advanced MySQL, and just 10 pages on OO programming. I also found the code hard to get going and a bit buggy. The 2nd edition seems to not really have moved with the pace of the area and it left me unsatisfied. In the end, I went in search of another book. Williams and Lane's new 2nd edition of "Web Database Applications with PHP and MySQL" (O'Reilly, 2004) has done it for me. It weighs in at almost 800 pages, a few hundred more than its 1st edition, and it looks like an almost complete rewrite. It covers PDF reporting in depth, installation on Windows and Mac OS X, and has chapters towards the end on PEAR, advanced MySQL, and PHP55 OO features. By the time I bought it, I guess wasn't really a newbie, but I still think it is gentle enough if you're still getting the basics (the first 200 pages or so introduce PHP and MySQL). It's a pretty awesome book, and shows again why O'Reilly are a safe bet (though perhaps it's wise to wait for the 2nd editions, judging by the bugs in the 1st edition of this one). I reckon both books are worth the money, but if you just want one, then O'Reilly's new book is better.
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