Taking care to focus solely on those topics that will have the most impact on experienced PHP developers, Pro PHP is written for readers seeking to take their understanding of both PHP and sound software development practices to the next level. Advanced object-oriented features, documentation, debugging, software patterns, and the Standard PHP Library are just a few of the topics covered in extensive detail.

Author and noted PHP expert Kevin McArthur also examines emerging practices and trends such as the MVC architecture as applied to PHP, with special emphasis placed upon the increasingly popular Zend Framework.

With Ajax and web services crucial to the success of todays web applications, the book concludes with several chapters covering JSON, the SOAP extension, and advanced web services topics.

If youre seeking to go beyond the basics, Pro PHP is the book for you.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 11 Ratings

Terrible book - 2009-10-19
Reviewer Rating:
Please, do NOT spend your money on this book. It does not cover any of the topics in good detail. A simple search of each of the topics by google could give more information.

Poorly titled book - 2009-06-22
Reviewer Rating:
I purchased this book, but after reviewing it more carefully, I felt that it wasn't worth the price and returned it. Yes, there's some good stuff on the SPL like other reviewers have noted, but I didn't buy the book to learn about the SPL. The "Testing" mentioned in the title is all of 4 and a half pages, with not even a word about integrating tests into a framework. And sure, there's some treatment of Zend Framework, but I already have a book about Zend Framework.

I bought this book primarily as an extension to my training I got in another Apress book "PHP: Objects, Patterns, and Practice". This book is smaller than that one, has huge overlap with 'Objects, Patterns, and Practice' - and where it overlaps, it's the weaker book. The topic coverage is extremely disjointed, and while not particularly difficult to follow in individual sections, does not seem made for actually reading from cover to cover.

It is maybe enough of an intro to a number of different topics that one could use it as a guide to which keywords they should plug into a search engine in order to find a more thorough article (or perhaps a better book). And again excepting for its treatment of the SPL, it is not quite sufficient for use either as a tutorial nor as a standalone reference manual.

I would advise those considering this book based on its title, to instead get PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice, Second Edition by Matt Zandstra, along with possibly PHPUnit Pocket Guide (Pocket Guides) and Zend Framework in Action by Allen, Low and Brown.

A PHP eye-opener - 2009-08-18
Reviewer Rating:
When I first learnt PHP - I learnt it in less than a day. Serious, I was able to write simple web pages, db operations, AJAX ... I thought I knew PHP.

Until I read this book and I realized that PHP is a very powerful language and needs to be learnt and applied well if you really want to make the most out of the language in your project.

What the book covers:
(1) object oriented patterns : the book discusses object oriented programming and patterns in a simple & lucid manner that anyone can understand. As I read through the book, I worked a couple of samples that came with the book and this made my understanding very clear
(2) Frameworks : The author starts off by writing a new framework - to make you understand how a framework works and why you need it and then goes into Zend framework which is the most popular
(3) Testing, Web Services and lots more : Testing using PHPUnit is very modular and avoids a lot of repetitive testing, the book describes PHPUnit, Web Services in a fair amount of detail

PHP originated as a script and now become a full fledged programming language. If you are still programming in a traditional scripting manner - you are missing something. Give yourself some time with this book and it will change your perspective about PHP.

What the book lacks:
(1) Security: The author should have discussed about PHP security - register globals, file upload security risks ...
(2) Comprehensive project : A comprehensive project to wrap up all the concepts would have been helpful

Great book - 2009-08-06
Reviewer Rating:
This book lives up to its reputation as being the best advanced book on PHP. I found it's coverage of design patterns, MVC architecture and Web Services especially useful.

Delivers on promise - 2009-02-21
Reviewer Rating:
Outstanding. This is precisely the information I was missing to go from competent to awesome at PHP.

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