While there is much good information in this book just look at the publication date ***2001*** Enough said... almost. I'm in the 6th week of a PHP/mySQL course and the main thing that is clearly missing are the mysqli functions. The book may still be useful but it is a disappointment :-(

4 stars because of the horrible (non-existent) support of the promised online version.

I have scoured the Web and have found these two sites that still have the online version ("http://fooassociates.com/phpfer/" says the server is down!). It was a LOT of work to find these, and I'm working on downloading the whole thing to put in a ZIP file and host, some time in the future, but in the mean time I thought I'd save everyone a LOT of work! Here you go:

http://web.archive.org/web/20040227150743/http://fooassociates.com/phpfer/
http://www.phpdig.net/ref/

This is without a doubt, a brilliant PHP reference book.

The PHP functions are grouped in chapters based on their relevance. E.G. String functions are in one chapter, Session functions are in another etc. So even if you don't know the name of the function you're looking for, you'll most likely find what you need in the relevant section.

The book is very well laid out, there are nice descriptions (not too long and not too short) of the function and its use. There is example code showing how to use the function and the functions have a 'related functions' part as well which in my case encourages further reading and thus expanding your knowledge of all things PHP.

Unfortunately though I've found that not all functions are covered in this book. I agree you can't cover them all, but surely a string length function would be covered? Don't let that discourage you though because I've only found a couple of functions that I've needed that weren't covered in this book. Apart from that, I wholeheartly recommend getting a copy. One of the best reference books I've ever purchased.

Reviewer Kevin Carlson noted that the book was not available online at the web address that it mentions. It turns out that there is an errata at www.sams.com giving the correct URL: http://fooassociates.com/phpfer/

This book is a must have for any PHP wed developer. I find myself referencing this book quite often. It's logically laid out and makes finding just the right function a lot easier then php.net.