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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 "PHPHacks," the only PHP guide that offers something useful and fun for everyone.
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 Outstanding PHP Tips & Tricks Book |
| Review Date: March 10, 2006 |
| Reviewer: Daniel McKinnon, Tewksbury, MA USA |
'PHP Hacks' by Jack Herrington truly is a book of hacks, tips, and tricks that I have found to be very useful. Covering 100 different ways to use PHP to perform a myriad of different tasks, this book covers many of the neat things that can be done to turn your web site from 'bland to grand' with little effort required!!
Some highlights of what this book will enable you to do with your PHP-based web site:
Create a skinnable interface
Add tabs to your web interface
Put an interactive spreadsheet on your page
Create drop down lists
Create dynamic menus for your site
Make a DHTML slideshow
Create an interactive calendar
Create thumbnail images
Read XML easily with regular expressions
Create RTF and Excel documents dynamically
Turn any object into an array
Create a login system for your web site
Aside from these top hacks/tips that I especially enjoyed, there is also time spent on better object oriented development with PHP, advice for testing your site out, and a whole myriad of other outstanding things you can do!
If you use PHP at your job and you want to tack on some more skills, you would be at a loss if you didn't pick up a copy of PHP Hacks.
***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED |
best PHP reference I have used, bar none
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| Review Date: February 21, 2006 |
| Reviewer: Abe Usher, Virginia |
I've read at least a dozen books on web development with PHP. This book is the best, by far!
The good:
* Excellent coverage of elegant PHP for dealing with databases and XML
* Outstanding explanation of automated code generation (a must for professional PHP developers)
* Description (and code implementation) of how to use design patterns with PHP. Former J2EE guys will love this.
* High quality prose and clear descriptions. I did not find any grammatical or spelling errors.
* Light sense of humor (without the unnecessary banter that one finds in most "... for Dummies" books)
The bad:
* Nothing.
As a software developer of 10 years, I give this book my highest recommendation. |
VERY VERY VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR CREATING DYNAMIC WEB PAGES
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| Review Date: February 5, 2006 |
| Reviewer: John R. Vacca, Pomeroy, Ohio |
Do you use Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP)--an open source, server-side, HTML embedded scripting language to create dynamic Web pages? If you do, this book is for you. Author Jack Herrington, has written an outstanding book that covers the entire PHP spectrum--offering hacks that are focusing on everything from HTML and Ajax to code generation and database-driven message queuing.
Herrington, begins by walking you through the basics of installing PHP and MySQL; as well as, using the Pear library. Then, he covers how to use HTML tricks in conjunction with PHP to jazz up your interface. The author continues by using the powerful combination of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript known as Dynamic HTML in conjunction with PHP to show just what you can do in a web browser. In addition, he shows a wide variety of methods that you can use to display data in a graphical form. The author also shows you how to make flexible database objects and even to build your database layer automatically using code generation. Then, the author takes the coverage of PHP up notch and discusses techniques that you can use to develop applications quickly and reliably. Next, he shows you how to use several design patterns to make better PHP applications. Next, the author covers testing techniques that will find bugs for you and continuously monitor the operation of your site. Then, he shows the use of different user interfaces to work with your PHP code. Finally, the author shows you how to use the fun stuff on the Web to monitor multiplayer games, use Google Maps in your applications, and much more.
This excellent book offers more than just canned solutions. It offers ideas and techniques that you can use in your own applications.
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Solid, Quality Reference For Many Possible Uses
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| Review Date: May 13, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Steve Bailey, U.S. |
It's very packed full of php solutions that, instead of having you thinking: "I might need this particularly obscure thing later, but then again probably not", like a lot of other books, you'll very likely consider getting a lot of use out of at least 75% of the "hack" recipes eventually.
They're not really hacks by the way, in the negative sense of the word. (Maybe the Recipes book came out first and "Hacks" was the next best word for the title, who knows). But these hack/tips are based on fundamental technologies such as reading/writing XML, preventing double submission on ecommerce sites, making use of design patterns in PHP, great UI tips ( I immediately put one of them to use, which had a url to a popular dhtml library I didn't even know of).
A major portion of the hacks involve excellent user interface advice such as dhtml menus, generating images, etc..
Excellent real-world MySQL tips that include a basic login system, or a PHP recipe that you can use over and over to auto-generate sql CRUD (create/read/update/delete) PHP code. And the other way around. Auto-create mysql code from xml files that contain the schema for the tables.
Also recipes that involve basic knowledge in adding a paypal buy button, php unit testing, testing with simulated users. I shouldn't even attempt at trying to be specific with the types of tips. There are so many of them, varying through different levels of categories
I'd consider it a must-have for all PHP coders. And the reason why I say this, is it's very likely that you will find value in your situation, in at least 2 or 3 of the included "hacks", that would easily cancel out the price of the book. But that's a worst case scenario |
quick "How to's ..."
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| Review Date: October 19, 2006 |
| Reviewer: M. Coughlin, Westerly, RI United States |
When trying to figure out how to implement something, do you ever wish that the examples you find would just 'cut to the chase'? ... skip the theory & just show me a rough idea of how to go about it?
This book contains 100 hacks/recipes, satisfying the above need. Each is 2- 3 pages, which can (mostly) be run right from their folder (~100 folders in the downloaded code samples, of course). A hack-folderName cross-refernece would have been nice, but, hey ...
They put you on the track in moments - no need to read the whole book for any hack/recipe - just jump right in (to the problem of your day) ... and you can modify/enhance, as your needs dictate.
Code documentation is non-existent and explanation is sparse; but, they do, indeed, satisfy the need for quick examples in 2 - 3 pages!
`lovin it! NICE format ... |
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