Programmers love its flexibility and speed; designers love its accessibility and convenience. When it comes to creating web sites, the PHP scripting language is truly a red-hot property. In fact, PHP is currently used on more than 19 million web sites, surpassing Microsoft's ASP .NET technology in popularity. Not surprisingly, this surge in usage has resulted in a number of PHP books hitting the market. Only one, though, takes the language beyond traditional Web programming and into mapping, graphing, multimedia, and beyond: PHP Hacks.

In PHP Hacks, author Jack Herrington wrings out his 20 years of code generation experience to deliver hands-on tools ranging from basic PHP and PEAR installation and scripting to advanced multimedia and database optimizing tricks.

On the practical side of things, PHP Hacks helps you develop more robust PHP applications by explaining how to improve your database design, automate application testing, and employ design patterns in your PHP scripts and classes. In the category of "cool," Herrington explains how to upgrade your Web interface through the creation of tabs, stickies, popups, and calendars. He even examines how to leverage maps and graphics in PHP. There's also a bounty of image and application hacks, including those that show you how to:

• Integrate web sites with Google maps and satellite imaging

• Dynamically display iPhoto libraries online

• Add IRC, SMS, and Instant Messaging capabilities to your Web applications

• Drop the latest Wikipedia dictionary onto your Sony PSP

• Render graphics and user interfaces with SVG, DHTML, and Ajax

Whether you're a newcomer or an expert, you'll find great value in PHP Hacks, the only PHP guide that offers something useful and fun for everyone.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 17 Ratings

Good book. - 2009-08-14
Reviewer Rating:
All in all, this is a pretty good book.

It covers many advanced things that most people would be able to think of, but it is a very good way to spark the lightbulb in your head into thinking up something really useful. For example, after reading the chapter about HTML bar grapsh, I thought of using one-pixel table elements to use a line graph.

I would suggest this book to anyone with a functional background in HTML, XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ajax, XSLT/XML, because this book is not really about the cool stuff of PHP itself, it's about what you can produce with it.

Filled with good ideas - 2009-08-07
Reviewer Rating:
The code in this book definitely lives up to the "hacks" title, but that's okay because it's filled with lots of good ideas and useful snippets.

PHP Potential Unleashed - 2009-06-04
Reviewer Rating:
There are a lot of ways to learn a language, and PHP is a popular one because it's dynamic. If you truly want to unleash the potential of this dynamic language than you need to get this book! Jack goes into detail and even provides scripts for hundreds of uses with the perspective of a seasoned veteran, it's easy to use and reference different sections.

doesn't keep what it promises - 2008-12-17
Reviewer Rating:
when I saw the title I was sure it is exactly what I needed, some special tips and tricks, something that you can't find easily on the internet. But it was nothing more.

The good thing is now I have some good ideas in a book and don't have to search every time online.

PHP Hacks - 2008-11-30
Reviewer Rating:
I haven't finished this book yet, but I think it will go really well with helping me to get a better grasp of PHP. I already knew a little bit before I bought this book and another book here. It's not a book for learning PHP from scratch, its for showing you how to do things with PHP that are very useful and innovative. I also purchased PHP and MySQL FOR Dummies by Larry Ullman, so this should help me in starting my business. :)

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