Rating: 
Summary: Good Job- Helped me get up to speed quickly.
Review: This book lays a good foundation in PHP for beginners and intermediate programmer-types. There is some repetition of online docs, but the author writes clearly, gives good examples, & presents some fairly tough concepts painlessly. Possibly the best thing about this book is it exists - there is very little published on PHP as of this writing - and I defnitely think I got my money's worth.
Rating: 
Summary: bad book
Review: not precise at all, a copy of the doc available at php.net ... unfortunately the only one available !
Rating: 
Summary: No organization!
Review: Well, I guess that I can't complain too much because it was a big help in getting me up to speed with php. As a X-ColdFusion developer I was able to pick apart the differences between the two languages pretty quick. BUT I was LESS than impressed with the organization of the manual. I don't recomend this book to anyone that just casually wants to learn PHP. The last part of the book gets into "Software Engineering" and organizing your projects. If I want a book on writing good code, I will read Code Complete or something more spacific to that topic. I hope that another book comes out on the topic of PHP soon. Frankly, this one just plain sucked.
Rating:
Summary: Flabbergasted!
Review: 3/4 of this text is a reprint of the online docs, with a little extra verbiage thrown in a half-hearted attempt to turn them into a book. The extra verbiage would be welcome if it actually helped explain PHP, but unfortunately it does not. Thus it's serves little more purpose than as an "extender". The bogus tactics don't stop here, however, as the production also utilizes abnomally large fonts and copious amounts of white space, not unlike the procrastinating student who is trying to turn 5 pages of plagarized notes into a 10 page term paper the night before it is due. An aprapo analogy, as the rushed nature is further evidenced by numerous typos.
Rating:
Summary: Looking for good book on PHP? Then pass this one by...
Review: A reader doesn't understand all the 1 star reviews, but after reading most of this book it's obvious to me. But don't take my word for it, go check out a copy at your local bookstore or library. I'm confident you'll agree that, regardless of how nice a guy the author may be, his book is horribly done. The flaws are everywhere, in every aspect. Frankly, I don't understand how anyone who's not got some ulterior motive could rate this anything above a 2, even on a good day. And in case there's any doubt, yes, I too, sent mine back.
Rating: 
Summary: Clearly shows a simple yet powerful alternative to CGI
Review: From a guy with a background in Java, C++, and C, I'd say it is well written for the novice to intermediate web developers who wants to try something other than CGI or ASP. It has a whole range of useful examples.
Rating:
Summary: great book for those already familiar with other languages
Review: This book was great for people who previously new other programming languages. For a person new to programming, this book would not be so friendly, but to those just looking to understand the syntax and functions, this book is perfect. After just reading this book over a for a short while you are more than capable of writing functional programs.
Rating:
Summary: Better than online docs, but not much
Review: The index in this book is appalling. The index is 95% function listings. How do I do search and replace on strings? If I don't know the name of the function that does it (the very reason I checked the book), then I'm out of luck. Also amusing is the egregious cut'n'paste error on the page explaining the CD-ROM, where they refer to the licensing for the Core Java Web Server CD-ROM. Ooops!
Rating:
Summary: Good and Bad
Review: Mr. Atkinson is a nice guy... but this book was rushed to market, and will be qualitatively beneath the next PHP books. As a handy paper source, it is sufficient. After flying through this book, I was comfortably writing 300 line PHP scripts to access Oracle databases and contextually format very complicated web pages. My general happiness with life right now is probably due more to PHP than to this book. One example of this book's problems: function calls are sorted alphabetically. Thus, you'll get to "closedir" way before you get to "opendir" or "readdir". Also, the function titles go like "string urlencode(string url_text)" -- which means that you have to read the SECOND word of every heading to see the (alphabetical) function name and the FIRST word to see what the function returns. Function descriptions are generally sorted into "File", "Database", "RegExp" etc., which further frustrates any quick reference attempts. The book is not in depth. If you're wondering whether you can regexp with a variable during a directory read, you're out of luck. I found myself wishing Larry Wall (of Perl) had written the book. The thing is, I probably know more about PHP after one week exposure to PHP than the book does. A good reference book is supposed to constantly refresh and enlighten you. Lastly, keep your pen handy, because this early edition's code has some errors that you'll want to correct on the page. The CD-ROM also has those errors.
Rating:
Summary: OK book for beginners
Review: The one thing i hated most about this book was its extremely large font.. Its should have been a wayy smaller font its just too huge and takes up to much space and the bulk of the book is alot like the online reference.. id still recommend it to only a newbie to programming.. if youve done Perl or C etc before.. the online reference is plenty to getting started.
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