The programmer's Guide to building robust web applications with PHP and MySQL

This is a comprehensive, practical guide for programmers who want to develop production-quality, database-enabled web applications with PHP and MySQL. Long-time developer Marc Wandschneider systematically addresses the entire process: not only coding, but also upfront application, user interface and database design, PLUS security, testing, and more.

You'll walk through building three applications from start to finish: a calendaring system, a weblog engine, and an e-commerce store. Along the way, you'll master essential strategies for creating robust web database applications and learn how to avoid the common pitfalls that trip up many developers moving to PHP and MySQL.

• Starts with a complete primer on PHP for developers including coverage of code organization, reuse, and object-oriented PHP

• Contains detailed treatments of data access, including transactions, foreign keys, and indexes

• Presents powerful data validation techniques utilizing PHP regular expressions

• Walks through planning web applications, including user interfaces and user management

• Offers systematic guidance on securing web applications from end to end

• Covers a wide range of implementation issues including internationalization, error handling, data validation, debugging, session management, and deployment

• Includes detailed chapters on XML, XML-based web services, and the PEAR framework for reusable PHP components

• Shows how to work with the Oracle and PostgreSQL databases

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 23 Ratings

Good materials to start off with but needs proof reading - 2008-02-13
Reviewer Rating:
As an experience programmer from ASP.Net, I can say that this is a good book for getting into PHP. The book paces pretty well, making sure you get the necessary basics but not bore you with overstuffed material.

The only thing that annoys me, is the amount of typos on the samples and sample codes. If you are a seasoned programmer like me, you will pick them up with no problem before testing them. But for the novice, it could give them extra time debugging.

Still I recommend this book.

One Star is too high for this book - 2009-04-03
Reviewer Rating:
I am really wondering who are the people they gave the book 4-5 stars...

This book is full of typo error, bug coding, wrong concepts by the following facts:

1. He propose a fingerprint concept, but actually fingerprint needs to be sent back to the user via other ways. The author makes the reader to assume that he can only md5 the user agent with a seed variable and store that in $_Session varialbe to make every work. Wrong!! Totally wrong, nobody will know your fingerprint if you don't send them back to the visitor, and it is meaningless.

2. The book really piss me off. It looks that the book was written by somebody who don't know PHP ...almost every two pages has a typo error, or even more... a script full of bugs....I read it totally once and take notes in every page, and after my reading, I start to try every code which I think is important, but I am really dispointed that they all are junk codes...and the author gave a lot of wrong concepts...for example, the chapter 5, using prev, next, current to handle array. He said if the next element in the array is (bool)False, the next function will end up. I tried it, and the author is wrong again.

It's really time-wasting in reading this kind of book. Not only waste your money, but also waste your time.

Way, way too ambitious for one book. - 2009-02-01
Reviewer Rating:
This book has some real gems in it, like the part about how to prevent hi-jacked sessions and cross scripting attacks. Which is why I gave it two stars.

But this book really needs to be split into 3 or 4 volumes. The author just cannot do justice to the complexity of the topics involved. And his lack of coding examples, typically 4 or 5 brief lines, shows this.

As for his "complete" examples, e.g. of a calendar project, he waxes so obtuse with his OOP coding that, not only does the project not work, good luck in trying to fathom it! (I spent two fruitless days at this task and finally gave up. And I have already written and sold a commercial calendar/scheduler to various companies.)

So, unless you are a programmer at the near genius level and you can extrapolate from coding samples like an Einstein at the chalk board with calculus & and a slide rule, the average programmer out there is going to need something much more basic than this book -- if he or she wants to explore the advanced topics it trys to present.

Great Intermediate level PHP book - 2008-11-12
Reviewer Rating:
This is a fairly long book at 858 pages. It is well worth your time. It's well written and therefore, easy to read. Each section gives a detailed explanation, followed by a well commented code example. The index is extensive so it will serve as a good PHP and MySQL reference. The books layout also makes for easy reading. Each chapter, 33 in all, is just long enough to be read in a day, and covers its topic extensively.

I would call this an intermediate level PHP book. It goes beyond your beginning PHP books. Yes, it covers PHP and MySQL basics in the first two sections. And then, it gets into the meat of why your learning PHP and MySQL with major sections on "Planning Web Applications", "Implementing you Web Application, and three "Sample Projects."

What I thought this book added that the basic PHP books do not cover was a constant attention to web security. If security could be a problem in each section of the book, the security issue was explained, and the example showed you how to protect your application from the potential security problem. It also covered areas that are usually glossed over in beginning books, such as cookies & sessions, secure (encryped) layer, user authentication, error handling, form validation, and regular expressions.

You can hardly go wrong with this book, it will give you a solid foundation for whatever you want to do in web development. I highly recommend it.

Outstanding Book on PHP and MySQL - 2009-02-24
Reviewer Rating:
This is an outstanding book if you have a background in programming C++ as I do. It is clear, concise and can be used as a reference book.

I used another book to get started and soon tired of the tedious copying and testing code. This book does not spend inordinate amount of time explaining each keystroke (exaggeration) and you can skim the parts you know and spend more time on the subject matter that you need to learn.

I highly recommend it.

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