Rating: 
Summary: Excellent tutorial and reference
Review: If you want a good intermediate to advanced book that includes: a solid tutorial of the syntax of PHP, an excellent function reference with good examples (99% of the examples worked for me), coverage of the new PHP5 capabilites, useful set of algorithms for common how-to features, and common sense guidelines on building, debugging, patterns, and Object Oriented php design, then this book will not disappoint.If youre looking for a dummies how-to book to get your database driven website up and running, don't buy this book. And don't complain when you do buy the book and it turns out to be not what you thought - you need to be willing or at a stage to invest the time and effort to learn PHP in depth. If you want a great reference and set of guidelines and algorithms, and are willing to extend yourself, then you will like this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Describes a Very Mature Language
Review: In what seems like a dazzingly short time, PHP has grown from a simple little language that dynamically generates web pages to a fully fledged object oriented language. Now available in its fifth major revision, PHP code looks so much like C, with the added benefit of being OO. PHP is still very specialised, confined to essentially web server applications. While it is true that PHP is no longer strictly confined to this, the de facto reality is that the vast majority of applications, and the concomitant employment prospects, are in the context of web servers. Clearly, if you are a web programmer, knowing PHP is a big plus. A hardcore way of doing this is to use the online documentation scattered throughout the web, and learn by downloading and analysing code examples. PHP veterans, including maybe the authors, probably did this. Nothing better at the time. While it works for some, this approach is awkward to many, and is quite ad hoc. The danger is in learning quick kludges as opposed to methodically designing and coding, with a full appreciation of the language's extent. Luckily, as PHP has matured, you can turn to this book for a logical pedagogy. The treatment is exhaustive and shows starkly how far PHP has come. For example, you can use all the major encryption algorithms (Rijndael, Serpent, DES...) as extensively and easily as though you were coding in C. On another tack, the image analysis routines now handle all the important image formats (GIF, JPEG, TIFF...). The book displays the breadth of such computing topics now available, and the wealth of library routines in each topic describes the depth of the treatment. Are you familiar with Fortran and the IMSL mathematical package so often associated with it? Or with C++ and its standard template library? Or C and the Numerical Recipes routines? If so, this book lets you appreciate that intellectually, PHP now ranks with those luminaries.
Rating:
Summary: If you want the Very BEST here it is
Review: It has been a great pleasure reading and learning from this book. The author Leon Atkinson has been an inspiration to me to learn this programming language. Without a doubt I believe this to be the best source for information and coding options on PHP. If you really want the very best resource for your own PHP projects you won't be sorry if you purchase this guide.
Rating:
Summary: Great Reference/Tutorial Mixture
Review: Now, understand I went into this book knowing NOTHING about PHP, but I did have a background in Perl, HTML, JavaScript, ASP, Visual Basic, C++, CSS, and QBasic. What's another language, right? It seems to me that all the (horribly) negative reviews for this book come from people that didn't understand it. Programming books are written for certain types of people, and most of the myriad of choices are valid for someone. If you do not know what "syntax" means, this book might not be for you.
I purchased this book because it had simple tutorials and a good index in the back. Because I knew nothing about PHP structurally speaking, I needed a few chapters of tutorials to figure out how to do this or that. From there, I relied on their reference for at-a-glance instructions on how to form arrays, or functions. Again, if you do not know what an array is or what a function is, this book is not for you.
When selecting a programming book, whether you have digital bytes running through your blood or just starting out, go to a freakin' book store and thumb through the resources on the shelf. See how they are written. See if they will teach you something productive. Many basic books fail to tell you the transitional steps to make your own code. Many "advanced" books are merely reference code, that are not a very good starting point for people, well, starting out. Some have illustrations. Some have CDs.
For me, this was the perfect guide. In conjunction with PHP.net, there is no task I cannot conquer with this language.
Rating:
Summary: A great book on PHP 5 at core
Review: One of my key concerns when reviewing a good book is the pull between information density and a light, easily read style. I believe that as we get further along the learning curve we can sacrifice some readability for density -- we want more facts and less explanation. The authors of Core PHP Programming have found a marvelous middle ground. Toward the beginning of the book they have a great deal of light, explanatory material as they cover the basics of PHP. As they move towards more advanced topics there is less explanation and a tighter packing of information. At the same time the book has a large number of small code examples throughout, making sure that you know how to use the functions under discussion. This is the third edition and I must admit that I had not come across it in either the first or second editions, so I have no great way of comparing them in this review. It has certainly been revised to take into account the changes for PHP 5 and examining the table of contents for the second edition on Safari I can see the that the basic structure has remained the same while the book has grown about 300 pages. The addition of Zeev Suraski as co-author can only be to the benefit of the quality of the information, particularly regarding PHP 5. The book starts with the absolute rock bottom of PHP, the basic data types and operators through to efficiency, debugging and design patterns. Along the way it covers almost all aspects of PHP 5 with a readable reference style. The 'Core' in the title of this book is a key to understanding it. If you're looking for a book with all the code required to handle session management, or user logins and security (to mention two possibilities) then this isn't the book for you. If, however, you are after a book that more than adequately explains the power and nuances of PHP and programming in the language then this is a marvelous volume. It's broken up into 5 sections: "Programming PHP," which covers the basics of data, control flow and I/O; "Functional Reference," which is 600 odd pages broken up into 12 chapters that seems to cover every PHP function (a check of three sub chapters showed every function mentioned on the topic at PHP.net was also in the book) and does it well with good explanation and code examples; "Algorithms," which details a number of methods of performing routine tasks such as sorting, parsing and generating graphics; and "Software Engineering," devoted to design, efficiency and design patterns; and finally, there are a seven excellent appendices. Taken as a whole it does a good job of covering the whole language and the ways of using it. I can imagine it would make a good companion volume to my other favourite PHP volume, PHP and MySQL Web Development, which tends more towards recipes and leaves out the encyclopedic coverage of this book. Leon Atkinson has a good web page for the book that includes a link to download all the code and examples, a link to the Prentice Hall page for those wanting an example chapter or a look at the Table of Contents and some other reviews. His site also has a page for the inevitable errata, currently blank. While I did find only one typo (not in example code) I can't claim to have read every page or run all the code examples. I'd recommend this volume to anyone who wanted a comprehensive guide to PHP 5. It is probably useful at almost all levels.
Rating: 
Summary: Book of lies!
Review: So, I thought the negative reviews on this page were kinda suspicious. I decided to buy the book anyways because of all the positive reviews. But, whoa! The negative reviews were right. This book sure is highbrow stuff. I mean, if you're an intermediate PHP programmer, you *might* understand this book. It tends to explain concepts on a high level and leave you to figure out implementation on your own. On one hand, the book explains very basic concepts about PHP as if you were some sort of newbie. Then, when it has to get to the meat of actually writing code, then the book treats you as if you're a veteran PHP user. Kinda weird. But, yeah, in general I didn't like this book. I'm no stranger to programming, but this book left me scratching my head.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent tutorial and reference
Review: Some of the begative reviews are just not well thought out and seem to attack the book from a lack of understanding of PHp itself. If youre a script kiddie looking for dummy php solutions, then dont buy this book. If you dont like PHP then this book is not for you. If, however, you want a good intermediate to advanced book that includes: a solid tutorial of the syntax of PHP, an excellent function reference with good examples (ALL of the examples worked for me), coverage of the new PHP5 capabilites, useful set of algorithms for common how-to features, and common sense guidelines on building, debugging, patterns, and Object Oriented design, then this book will not disappoint. One neg reviewer wondered what was so "core" about this book. Another seemed to think the positive reviews were connected with the author. What rubbish. Maybe the [planet he lives on (planet moron) has a different definition of the word core, but on Earth the word in English means: A set of subjects or courses that make up a required portion of a curriculum. Which is exactly what this book gives you. I said it in a previous review and I'll say it again: If youre looking for a dummies how-to book to get your database driven website up and running, dont buy this book. And dont complain when you do buy the book and it turns out to be not what you wanted, simply because youre not willing to invest the time and effort to learn PHP in depth, or youre unable to grasp the OO and design concepts of PHP. If you want a great reference and set of guidelines and algorithms, and are willing to use your brain, then you will like this book.
Rating:
Summary: Ignore the negative posts
Review: This book achieves what it sets out to: A core reference on php. It won't teach you how to implement a silly pet store with a mysql database. But it will be a useful resource and a great reference to the language, functions sorted according to meaningful chapters with excellent poignant examples, and how-to's for common real-world problems, then this is for you. If you want to learn how to develop a web application according how someone else thinks you should design it, then go for the more popular tutorial-style books. If you want a desktop reference that you can rely on when you need the facts then this is it. The reviewers who gave this low stars probably want their hand held thru a join the dots web project. If you are a serious PHP web application designer who values creativity and flexibility and wants more than a tutorial, you'll be impressed with Core PHP, 3rd Edition. It also covers PHP 5 improvements to the language as well. Maybe thats why the script kiddies are wary because PHP is moving away from procedural script-in-html mode into the Object Oriented world of component driven design. There are great chapters on software engineering, efficiency, integration, and design patterns that will be invaluable to the PHP architect. As are the full descriptions of configuration variables and interacting with your environment.
Rating:
Summary: Flat out sucks
Review: This book just flat out sucks. The negative reviews say it all, so I won't waste time writing up the same stuff they did.
Rating:
Summary: Great book ... if you already know PHP
Review: This is a fantastic book if you already know PHP. If you're like me -- transitioning from ASP to PHP -- this book is completely, utterly, worthless. In order to understand the programming syntax, you must already be familiar with C. The book does a poor job of acclimating you to it's backwards, excessively abbreviated method of coding. The vast majority of functions and methods described in the book have absolutely NO CODE EXAMPLES whatsoever. Many functions get exactly one small paragraph of description, without any detail of input, output or expected return data. A great example is the $_REQUEST pregen variable. How do you use it? Don't rely on this book to figure it out. There's NO DOCUMENTATION. What if you want to know how to connect to a MySQL server that isn't your "localhost"? This book doesn't even touch the syntax of mysql_connect. All of the examples in the book use "localhost" over and over again. Apparently, the good people at PHP don't think that you would ever ever in a million years connect to a MySQL server that isn't on your local system. Oops. Furthermore, the Index is also worthless. Referring to the previous example, let's say you wanted to find what little information there is on the $_REQUEST pregen variable. If you look under "R", you won't find it. If you look under "$", you still won't find it. Somehow, you must magically know to look under "pregenerated variables" in order to find the index entry for $_REQUEST. That's great if you already knew that you were looking for something that was classified as a pregen variable. But, if you didn't know that tidbit of information, then this book left you high & dry. This book makes great leaps of abstraction. They explain a small amount of syntax, and expect you to re-apply that syntax haphazardly when you write your code. Here is a brief allegory of their style of explanation, so you understand what we're talking about: 1. The universe is made from sub-atomic particles.
2. Sub-atomic particles make atoms.
3. From this, we can understand how Man creates skyscrapers. That's how this insipid book reads from cover to cover. The second half of this book ignores the concept of "reference manual" completely, and dives into program theory. It's a great computer science 101 refresher course on sorting algoriths and program structure, and even coding styles! To sum up, if you already know PHP and you enjoy a trip through abstracted fantasy land, buy this book. On the other hand, if you exist in reality and you want to learn how to write PHP code, skip this useless paperweight.
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