Rating: 
Summary: Perhaps I'm just different, but...
Review: I must say that I was shocked to see the poor reviews for this book. I use it on a daily basis, and essentially taught myself PHP using this book as a crutch. My only complaint in its format is the lack of output associated with the pieces of sample code. I *do* like the way it's set up with categorized functions to easily reference and practicality -- it doesn't BS around like most others (see: Professional PHP Programming [pub. by WROX]).
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty disappointing
Review: I bought this book despite the overall warnings posted here. And indeed, they were right: this book is pretty weak. I'm moving an application over from Cold Fusion, and hoped this book would at least show off PHP in a good light. Instead, it's very disjointed -- a series of function calls with poor examples.I had expected to be impressed with PHP over Cold Fusion -- PHP supports Object Oriented programming, real function calls (CF's user-defined functions are weak), etc. I don't believe this book shows off PHP very well. So why did I buy it, despite the bad reviews? Because at the time, it was the only PHP book on the market.
Rating: 
Summary: Not as bad as many think - for beginners
Review: This book was the first of five I now own on the topic, and while many of the criticisms written previously here are accurate (especially the irritating example code which doesn't show you the resulting output), I still find myself pulling this one off the shelf because of some of its virtues : 1) It's a decent introduction to PHP, because it won't overwhelm the first-time web programmer, and pretty much assumes you don't know much of anything 2) Despite the amazingly disorgranized approach to the topic, certain sections are quite useful : regular expressions, various sorting methods, generating graphics on the fly, and basic approaches to integrating HTML & PHP are well covered. 3) Even though it's an apparent ploy to boost the page count of a book of somewhat shallow content depth, the fact that the type is larger than average with huge bold headlines for each function really helps if you're just flipping through looking for something specific. 4) The cover is actually attractive, unlike the usual monstrosity of a cover of Professional PHP Programming (why does WROX think we acutally want the faces of the authors staring up at you all the time ? ). OF course, Professional PHP Programming is far and away the best book on this topic if you have any programming experience.
Rating:
Summary: Decent Docs, Good examples, Helpful cd
Review: I give the book a thumbs up. It is the first book on PHP and I expected it to be a general reference / tutorial book covering the basics--which it certainly does. Sure you could use the on-line docs, and there are some good on-line tutorials but this puts it all in one place and makes it easy to take on the bus. Sure, if you've mastered the docs and on-line tutorials available, the book is a nice hard copy but you may not find much new info--but as a beginner, I found the book helpful. Newer printings have corrected an error which slipped in early but I strongly recommend reading the review by Lara Fabans below. In addition to code examples from the book and PHP itself, the CD contains the Xitami web-server for Win 95/98. Though instructions are installation are only given for NT, the Win 95/98 installation is the easiest thing in the world (surprised me!) with a couple of notable exceptions. (1) When I installed Xitami I had a hard time setting up the PHP filter through the admin mechanism. For some reason the filter information isn't saved so I've had to create and manually edit a deaults.cfg (see xitami.cfg for template). Once you do this PHP works great, except that... (2) The CD does NOT include a MySQL server for Win 95/98. This you will find on the MySQL website, but making all three work together has been a bear. Without MySQL many of the examples simply will not run. It probably best just to let some hosting service do all the dirty work. But gee, it would have been nice to test PHP scripts from home and stay off-line... But am I sorry I bought the book? No way, I'd still be on square one glaring at on-line refs. without it.
Rating: 
Summary: Not worth the Money
Review: As an experienced developer, I expect that any book of 900+ pages will cover the material in a flowing, yet concise manner, and be applicable in the real world. That was not the case with this book. The writing was stilted and random. The information was no more than you could find in the online manual. The examples were in no way what I would call real world. Perhaps the next release will be better.
Rating:
Summary: Decent but shallow reference book
Review: I found this book to be a decent reference, but any time I wanted to know more than the basics of how to call a function or use its return results, I would discover that it didn't have the detail I was looking for. This book was the first on the market to cover PHP, and it feels as though it was rushed. It's not sloppy, but it isn't deep, and I've ultimately decided that I'm better off with the online manual than this book, because all I can use it for is for function references, and the online manual is more current.
Rating:
Summary: Great overall
Review: I found this book most helpful. I came to PHP from reading webmonkey.com's tutorial, and wanting more. I got it. I've found the odd mistake, and differences in the code on the CD from that in the book, but overall it's great. I'd of preferred more info on what to do when it all goes wrong.
Rating:
Summary: Good over all.
Review: This book is very good over all, but they're are a few mistakes in some of the samples. It's a very good read, and it has listings of a lot of functions in the back, with the way to use them.
Rating:
Summary: All round OK
Review: I felt that this book was basically a good way to get going in decent PHP programming. The author assumes that you know a fair bit more about programming than he lets on, so it's good to have a bit of experience (in C would be best). Overall a good read, and the reference section for every php function is very helful to have (better than the online manual). a good buy.
Rating:
Summary: PHP3
Review: This is a good book, but I feel that examples need to be more complex. Examples like how to make a php autheticate to a web aplication with Postgres have to be more accurate. The book also need to explain more how to use external variables.
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