When it comes to creating dynamic web sites, the open source PHP language is red-hot property: used on more than 20 million web sites today, PHP is now more popular than Microsoft's ASP.NET technology. With our Cookbook's unique format, you can learn how to build dynamic web applications that work on any web browser. This revised new edition makes it easy to find specific solutions for programming challenges.

PHP Cookbook has a wealth of solutions for problems that you'll face regularly. With topics that range from beginner questions to advanced web programming techniques, this guide contains practical examples -- or "recipes" -- for anyone who uses this scripting language to generate dynamic web content. Updated for PHP 5, this book provides solutions that explain how to use the new language features in detail, including the vastly improved object-oriented capabilities and the new PDO data access extension. New sections on classes and objects are included, along with new material on processing XML, building web services with PHP, and working with SOAP/REST architectures. With each recipe, the authors include a discussion that explains the logic and concepts underlying the solution.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 42 Ratings

Boils down what you want your scripts to do - 2010-01-23
Reviewer Rating:
A book to teach simplification in coding. For everyone who has read three or four PHP books, this book solves so many puzzles you may have created for yourself. Each recipe gives you a good basis for using a PHP function. As the recipe progresses, the book sometimes demonstrates how to simplify your code further. By the end of each recipe - usually no longer than a page or two - it introduces discussion as to the usefulness of the script or resources to read more about expanding upon the function.

Finally a book that covers more than just the basics - 2010-01-15
Reviewer Rating:
I've looked through a lot of PHP books and it is very difficult to find good ones (that is for more than the basics). This book fills in a lot of the gaps in understanding how PHP works, with explanations of more advanced techniques, like regular expressions and cURL.

Recommended.

Use it every day I program with PHP - 2009-09-28
Reviewer Rating:
This is an indispensable tool for PHP programmers! There are so many great, no BS examples in here. There are about 24 chapters, each with about 10 to 15 examples. I found the Files and Directories sections to be very chock full of information. The Array and Form sections are great too.

This book is not for beginners, because as I said, most of the fluff has been cut out and each recipe is only 1 - 3 pages long. However, if you have a strong background in other languages, then once you learn PHP's syntax (which is similar to C), this book is a great reference for when you need to look up how to do something specific. It's a lot easier than looking it up on PHP's online manual (which I have to say is excellent; thanks PHP!)

There are also a few mini programs that are excellent, like a "Tiny Wiki".

My only quam (spelling?) with this book is that the Database section doesn't cover the mysql and mysqli extensions. But, these functions are simple enough that you can just look them up anywhere.

If you do any PHP programming, then you need this book!

Fantastic job David and Adam!

Dog-eared, tattered & torn - 2009-02-09
Reviewer Rating:
I bought about 25-30 PHP/MySQL books while learning & this was easily one of my top 5 most used. Programming PHP (Oreilly) and PHP 5 in Practice (Developer's Library) are also pretty solid. If you're ready for MySQL, replace the latter with PHP and MySQL Web Development (4th Edition, Developer's Library). I also found the Apress books fairly helpful. Definitely get the Cookbook, though. You'll reference it whenever you code.

PHP cooks - this is your recipe book - 2009-01-25
Reviewer Rating:
Not much to say other than that this book continues the O'Reilly's legacy of top books for self learning.

Browse Similar Topics

Top Level Categories:
Internet/Online
Programming

Sub-Categories:
Internet/Online > PHP
Programming > PHP