 Developing applications instead of standalone pages... |
| Review Date: November 12, 2005 |
| Reviewer: Thomas Duff, Portland, OR United States |
I had a blog reader email me today and ask if I knew of any good books on PHP and MySQL. Being that I'd like to learn more about both of those subjects myself, I recently had requested (and had sitting in my review pile) a copy of Core Web Application Development With PHP And MySQL by Mark Wandschneider. If you're focused on *application development* (rather than just learning how to create a dynamic page), then this book works pretty well...
Contents:
Part 1 - The Basics of PHP: Getting Started with PHP; The PHP Language; Code Organization and Reuse; Object-Oriented Programming; Working with Arrays; Strings and Characters of the World; Interacting with the Server - Forms
Part 2 - Database Basics: Introduction to Databases; Designing and Creating Your Database; Using Databases - Storing and Retrieving Data; Using Databases - Advanced Data Access; PHP and Data Access
Part 3 - Planning Web Applications: Web Applications and the Internet; Implementing a User Interface; User Management; Securing Your Web Applications - Planning and Code Security; Securing Your Web Applications - Software and Hardware Security
Part 4 - Implementing Your Web Applications: Error Handling and Debugging; Cookies and Sessions; User Authentication; Advanced Output and Output Buffering; Data Validation with Regular Expressions; XML and XHTML; Files and Directories; File Uploading; Working with Dates and Times; XML Web Services and SOAP; Using PEAR; Development and Deployment
Part 5 - Sample Projects and Further Ideas: Strategies for Successful Web Applications; An Appointment Manager; A Blogging Engine; An Ecommerce Application
Appendixes: Installation/Configuration; Database Function Equivalents; Recommended Reading
Index
I differentiated the type of learning at the start of this review on purpose. It's pretty easy to go into learning a new language focusing solely on the nuts and bolts of the syntax. That's really not the pattern that's followed with this book. You don't just learn how to add some PHP code to your page in order to display the time of day to the user. The goal here is to learn how to build an *application* instead of just a single dynamic page. The layout and flow of the book supports that goal well. You start with basic PHP concepts and syntax. Then you move on to basic database concepts that are used in MySQL (and in fact *any* relational database system). Once those two basic skill sets are covered, then the blending occurs. You start learning how to use PHP to read and store data in MySQL, and those concepts are then used to build an end-to-end application. Throw in the essentials of securing your application and making it bulletproof for users, and you have a pretty encompassing guide for a development professional to use.
If PHP and MySQL were going to be something I used on a regular basis, I'd follow up this book with two specific titles for PHP and MySQL. Even though this Core title is large, there's no way it can cover all the details on either subject. And in reality, I don't think you'd want that if this is your first exposure. A practical volume such as this one will get you thinking correctly as far as design and techniques go, and then you can decide if this is where you want to commit your time and resources.
Nicely done book, and one I'd recommend for your first PHP/MySQL experience. I'll be revisiting this book myself in 2006 in order to pick up a few more skills... |
I bought this one as my first choice
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| Review Date: November 4, 2005 |
| Reviewer: William J. Turgeon, Eastcoast USA |
As a beginner seeking to develop as much beginning-to-intermediate knowledge and information about PHP and MySQL as possible in the coming two months, I went to local book stores to see all the titles offered on these two topics -- and to select the best.
"Core Web Application Development with PHP and MySQL" by Marc Wandschneider was the book I bought. -- [Jump down to later portions of this review if you don't want to read about how terrific the page layouts are.]
This newly published title offers the perfect blend of depth, high readability, quality writing, and outstandingly handsome and clean page design and layout -- a significant attribute in the face of so many computer books on store shelves with layouts that are so cramped, ugly, cluttered and dense.
Many computer books offer wasted galaxies of white space wrapped around text which itself has been reduced to microscopically small unreadability. In contrast, this book utilizes white space in perfect elegance and moderation. The typeface is never too tiny, and it changes frequently in helpful and readable ways. The author owes the editor and designer a high debt of gratitude for the rare and incredible job of page design.
OK, Yes, the Contents: As a motivated beginner I cannot fully address the technical content itself (since I have yet to master it), but I recognize good books -- and well-written books -- when I see them. This is one. -- [Another review located here provides a detailed breakdown of the contents, chapter-by-chapter.]
In my estimation, this book is targeted to the motivated beginner through high intermediate user, and I only say high intermediate because this generous book of 787 pages does not strive to be the super overly-complete master compendium bible on PHP and MySQL, but only a highly accessible and informative one, while still offering the reader a very nice learning curve for growth, challenge and involvement.
The essence of this book is captured in this phrase: "Challenging content; invitingly written; easily digested."
The author is to be thanked for the wonderfully clear and straightforward foundational explanations he provides in the text before bringing readers into the heart of each chapter. Those central parts of each chapter are momentarily beyond my capacity, but the outstanding introductory material at the start of almost every chapter is an immensely useful service to the motivated beginner.
Soon as I give myself a brush-up on X/HTML tags and some generic programming/coding concepts like functions and variables and calls and loops and conditionals and arrays, this beginner will be nicely prepared to dig most productively into this terrific new offering of a book.
PS -- If the beginner is not striving to be "super system administrator supreme," then by adding the above book to these several others below, he/she will have a great beginning collection by which to get a confident handle on MySQL and PHP programming concepts and skills:
-- Learning PHP 5 by David Sklar (O'Reilly)
-- PHP 5 in easy steps by Mike McGrath (Barnes & Noble!)
-- MySQL Essential Skills by John Horn/Michael Grey (McGraw Hill/Osborne)
-- MySQL Complete Reference -- Vikram Vaswani (McGraw Hill/Osborne)
Yes, I do know what the super-comprehensive "bibles" on MySQL/PHP are, and some are very successful and I may use some of them in future, but I find that I usually NEVER read "the big bibles" all the way through.
In contrast, you (if a beginner) will definitely enjoy reading the above five volumes ALL the way through, especially this delicious title at hand: "Core Web Application Development with PHP and MySQL" by Marc Wandschneider. |
Much more than another PHP reference book
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| Review Date: October 12, 2005 |
| Reviewer: B. Williams, |
| This book just arrived today and it is amazing. Not only is it a complete guide to PHP and MySQL, but it's written in such a clear way that someone who has never programmed before, could write a mature and robust web application, using this book. I have read a lot of technical books and this one is top notch. The code snippets and diagrams are first rate. Marc writes in a clear conversational style, with a great sense of humor, that makes the concepts very easy to understand. |
Learn to use this combination for great web applications
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| Review Date: December 12, 2005 |
| Reviewer: Harold McFarland, Florida |
| Divided into five sections this book attempts to cover pretty much everything you need to know to develop web based applications with PHP and MySQL. Part one goes over the basics of PHP including data types, variables, functions, object-oriented programming, arrays, and forms. The second part the looks at databases including designing, creating, and using a database. It includes a very good section on the basics of database design. This part ends with a chapter that brings these first two sections together by examining how to use PHP to access your database. Now that you understand how PHP and MySQL are going to work together the author turns to how to design web applications including the user interface and user management. Of course he also looks at code security and other security issues for web applications. This is the part of planning that should occur before any code is written. It helps tremendously if you know what you are trying to achieve before writing code and this part of the book covers how to do that very well. The fourth part examines how to implement your web application and covers error handling, cookies, authentication, buffering, validation, regular expressions, XML, XHTML, working with files and directories, and deploying the application. Finally the last part is filled with sample projects including an appointment manager, blogging engine, and an eCommerce application. All the source code from the book is included on a CD-ROM so you can cut and paste and adapt to your needs. An excellent guide for programmers working with PHP and MySQL enabled web sites, Core Web Application Development with PHP and MySQL is highly recommended. |
comprehensive server side discussion
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| Review Date: October 16, 2005 |
| Reviewer: W Boudville, Terra, Sol 3 |
The reason for the book's length is that the author is attempting to cover a lot of ground. There are comprehensive and separate descriptions of PHP and MySQL. Keep in mind that each has multiple books devoted to it. The PHP section has a good emphasis on object oriented coding. This can be vital if you have a large PHP code body, for using OO helps code scale to larger sizes.
The MySQL section of the text is also nontrivial. Amongst other things, it describes how to design and create a database. Ideas that are largely independent of MySQL, though they can be, and are, implemented in it, in the text.
Of course, the main attraction of the book is in combining PHP and MySQL. Here, the book goes into how to make a multitier architecture, from the client side to the database. Chapter 14 on writing the user interface is a little skimpy. But other chapters on the server side issues have more detail on their subjects. Which includes a chapter on XML. Quite aside from PHP or MySQL, knowing how to use XML can be important to you.
The book even finds time to cover Web Services and how you might implement and interact with these, using PHP. |
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