Rating: 
Summary: Great Reference & Down to Earth.
Review: This book is a great reference for advanced PHP developers, and easy enough for beginners. It has some nice examples for each function, and gives some good applications for PHP. This book is a must for any web developer.
Rating: 
Summary: Poorly edited. Verbose. Lousy examples.
Review: With a good editing job, this book could and should be cut down to half of its 568 pages. It is too verbose to use as a tutorial, yet not detailed enough to use as a reference. For example, there's no need to re-explain passing by reference, or global vs local EVERY time you use the terms. Once is enough! The examples are very poor, especially those in part II. Each function example is a syntactically-correct but semantically unhelpful illustration of the function call. Example output is not shown, so if you don't have a machine handy to try it out, you are out of luck -- this book can not be read while on the road. But I must be missing something. All the other reviews so far are raves. I just don't get it.
Rating: 
Summary: Well written for the novice, and great reference for experts
Review: This is a well written, and useful book for the novice PHP programmer. It has nice examples, and a "down home" style that will appeal to people bored of the usually droll programming manuals. It is also an excellent reference manual for the experienced PHP programmer, and much better than the terse online doc available. The only negative worth mentioning is the quality of the printed material itself. It looks like the book was rushed to print -- the bindings have excess glue, and many of the pages are machine crinkled. Otherwise, I'm sure my copy will end up well worn and dog-eared ...
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Introduction
Review: Mr. Atkinson has created the most understandable source of programming information I have seen to date. While to the PHP hack it may be review of current information. This guide provides the growing ranks of PHP enthusiast with a fabulous resource of real world examples and thorough explanation of the many "forks in the road" that can make learning a new language frustrating.
Rating:
Summary: Compact coverage of PHP
Review: This book provides a compact coverage of things you need to know if you are serious about dynamic web development. Most of the crucial parts, like database connectivity, date/time functions, string functions, etc. are covered. There is even a little chapter about software engineering at the end of the book, explaining software design basics. Overall a very good book, compared with other (non-english) PHP books.
Rating:
Summary: Good book, not much new
Review: I consider my self an Intermediate PHP coder, and I've found the book to be a good reference. I think the book was aimed at beginners to PHP, and as such I don't find it as useful as the on-line docs. I would recommend the book for anyone who needs some examples to go with the vanilla definitions in the manual.
Rating:
Summary: Half fast read & Half reference manual
Review: My background is NT/ MSSQL/ IIS/ ASP, and I am studying how to translate that to Linux/ postgreSQL/ APACHE/ PHP -- PHP was the missing link until I got this book. It's a very good book (also the only real choice right now). The first half is very readable straight through; the second half goes function by function to provide a reference manual for later. The only area that wasn't optimal for me was the database treatment, which is covered only in the second half. The book could benefit from a more integrated treatment of that topic; perhaps with an end-to-end website example that could be used for each topic covered in the first half as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Core PHP Programming is for Novices and Experts alike!
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Well written. A must have for dynamic web engineering.
Review: The book flows more like a novel then a text book. A pleasurable read. The content is as fresh and empowing as PHP itself. Great for novice programmers with HTML experience and an excellent resource for experienced programmers new to PHP. For open source to survive, we need more authors like Atkinson.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic - great language, great book!
Review: PHP has been the greatest resource I have ever used, superior to ASP on so many levels. This book really helped me master this powerful and flexible scripting language.
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