Rating: 
Summary: there must be better books available
Review: a php novice, i purchased this book and immediately set out to do two quick php projects, the first with MySQL and the second with PostgreSQL. the MySQL project went fairly well; the flaws in the book didn't become clear until the PostgreSQL project when i realized that the author had apparently never used the PHP3/PostgreSQL API and never tested his examples. Additionally, for a 700+ page book, it doesn't cover many things that might be encountered in reading older php code.
Rating:
Summary: More of a reference book... and a mediocre one
Review: Don't expect to learn much from this book. The tutorial is mediocre and so is the reference. This book could've fit in about 100 pages or so as it seems the font spacing was raised too high. There's a lot of wasted space on the paper... but the cover is really neat...
Rating: 
Summary: 2nd edition exactly what I needed
Review: I thought this was a great book. I'm an intermittant PHP programmer, and this book helped solidify my foundation, and taught me how to apply PHP in ways I'd never thought of. Its reference section actually has useful examples, and all the explanations in the book are laser-focused and dead on. The author clearly knows his stuff - not just how to use PHP, but has a deep understanding of the subject. I strongly recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: ...
Review: A friend of mine left this behind, along with some other eclectic freeware books. What's this PHP stuff? Well, I took a gander at this book and it really put me to sleep in no time flat. Reads like an (incomplete) reference manual. I found it about a hundred times easier to simply dive into a few of my friend's PHP pages and play around/add features just by inferring the syntax. PHP is that simple (mostly like a simple version of Perl), but this book obscures that in mind numbingly boringness. To boot, it's not even that useful in configuring your system. Avoid O'Reilly's "MySQL & mSQL" by Yarger et al. It's ...[horrible], too.
Rating:
Summary: Poor
Review: I wanted a good book to learn PHP and this is so not it. Most of the book is a poorly typeset rehash of the on-line documentation. They ought to revise the GNU pubic license to prohibit people from simply copying the online refererence materials and then pawning it off on paying customers as a "book". Will never buy from this author or press again.
Rating: 
Summary: Not really a programming manual.
Review: I'd rather give this 2.5 stars but that's not an option. I recently checked this book out of the library prior to deciding whether to buy it for my personal reference library. I was hoping for a good overview of programming PHP applications but instead got a basic language reference, which is okay as far as it goes but it certainly isn't the way it's advertised. As a reference manual its adequate but not as good as some of the other manuals out there, including the (free) online PHP documentation. On the whole its rather a disappointing book as it doesn't fulfill any objective well.
Rating:
Summary: Piece of junk
Review: This book is a piece of junk. I agree with those who call it a 'fat manual', 'big bore' etc. Not only most of the material is copied flat-out from PHP's documentation, there are bad tysetting mistakes (such as printing a big hypen for two dashes) and some factual errors. Index is useless and so it is the rest of the book. Important features like form and session have been written in a hand-waving fashion and lack all useful information. If someone really wants a good book on PHP, go get "Professional PHP ..." from Wrox. This is the best book I have seen so far... and I am not paid a commission for saying that. On a similar note, for MySQL I have found the book by 'Paul Bubois' the best. Enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: The only book you should read
Review: This book is great, I dont understand why everyone rates it so poorly. I picked it up and a week later I was writeing nice scripts for the web. It not only covers the language of php it covers a bit of sql and it also has a refference that you can use. I would recomend this to any person who has no programming experiance or little. (Not counting HTML or JavaScript). The only thing holding it back is the way the examples are set up. Sometimes the example they are talking about is 3 pages ahead of it. Other than that, this book is the perfect PHP book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent...
Review: Great book... I have some unix shell scripting and C++ skills and found this book to make PHP learning a breeze. The reference guide too would make it useful for more advanced users. If only all books could be written as well as this one...
Rating:
Summary: good book, just not for me
Review: The book assumes no knowledge of computers or programming, so that's great for a complete beginner. But I already know several languages, so I blew through the first 100 pages, as it talks about the actual language. I just needed to get the new syntax. The next, and largest part of the book, is a massive reference similiar to the manual you could download at php.net. It is mostly reference, but he does add a few lines of code here or there to clarify how a function is used. My complaint is that each reference section is just an unorganized mismash of functions with a description here or there. I'd say this book would be great if you are an absoulte beginner and you need to learn php as your first language. Or if you want an excellent reference that covers just about all of the functions. I didn't like it because, I am not a beginning programmer, and I can get a function reference online. I would prefer a book that is task oriented or takes you through a large program and shows you all the functions in their context, explaining them as you go along.
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