PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide (2nd Edition)

Product Details

Author : Larry Ullman
Paperback: 720 pages
Publisher: Peachpit Press; 2 edition (June 21, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN: 0321336577
Product Dimensions: 9.0 x 7.0 x 1.4 inches





Book Description
It hasn't taken Web developers long to discover that when it comes to creating dynamic, database-driven Web sites, MySQL and PHP provide a winning open source combination. Add this book to the mix, and there's no limit to the powerful, interactive Web sites that users can create. With step-by-step instructions, complete scripts, and expert tips to guide readers, veteran author and database designer Larry Ullman gets right down to business: After grounding readers with separate discussions of first the scripting language (PHP) and then the database program (MySQL), he goes on to cover security, sessions and cookies, and using additional Web tools, with several sections devoted to creating sample applications. This guide is indispensable for Web designers who want to replace their static sites with something more dynamic. The companion Web site includes source code, support forums, and extra tutorials. In addition to being updated for the most recent releases of MySQL and PHP, this new edition offers 25% new material, including updated examples for improved clarity and comprehension and new installation instructions for PHP, MySQL, and other related technologies.

From the Back Cover
When static HTML pages no longer cut it, you need to step up to dynamic, database-driven sites that represent the future of the Web. In PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide, the author of best-selling guides to both the database program (MySQL) and the scripting language (PHP) returns to cover the winning pair in tandem-the way users work with them today to build dynamic sites using Open Source tools. Using step-by-step instructions, clearly written scripts, and expert tips to ease the way, author Larry Ullman discusses PHP and MySQL separately before going on to cover security, sessions and cookies, and using additional Web tools, with several sections devoted to creating sample applications. A companion Web site includes source code and demonstrations of techniques used in the volume. If you're already at home with HTML, you'll find this volume the perfect launching pad to creating dynamic sites with PHP and MySQL

Spotlight Reviews :

Reviewer : A Reader
This book is, to say the very least, the finest computer book I have read in a very, very long time. I have spent the last three months trying to learn how to use PHP and MySQL to build a website with a simple content management system, however, due to the grossly unethical practice that publishing companies have of releasing books that are filled with editing and other errors, along with authors who are completely unable to write even a simple complete sentence that may be understood by their readers, I had nearly given up. Specifically, I have already WASTED money on the following books:

Creating Interactive Websites with PHP and Web Services by Eric Rosebrock - this book crashes around page 100 - it COULD have been a good book but is filled with errors that make it unusable. The publisher, Sybex, refuses to publish a real errata sheet and the book is NOT supported on the author's web site. Isn't that nice?

PHP MySQL Website Programming: Problem - Design - Solution by Chris Lea, Mike Buzzard, Jessey White-Cinis, and Dilip Thomas. Good luck if you can get past just page 30! Considering this book has been out for some time, there is NO REAL support or errata sheet for it. The "sample site" that one is allegedly able to build by working through this book is filled with questions such as "Has anyone made it all the way to the end of this book?" Need I say more? What a joke.

MySQL/PHP Database Applications, SECOND EDITION. Gosh, considering this is the SECOND edition of this book, one might think an errata sheet and other help might be available. Forget that though - Wiley gets your money, you get plastered with errors so you can't get through the book.

PHP and MySQL Web Development by Luke Welling and Laura - Another USELESS second edition. Not only does the code in this book NOT WORK but the examples that you can download doesn't match what's in the book! Not only that but, as to be expected, there is no errata sheet and the authors web site that is allegedly there to "support" this book has nothing but an advertisement for it with the promise that the "site is under development." Wonder if it will ever be "developed."

As noted, ALL of the books above are USELESS. On a fluke, I decide to try one more - Larry Ullman's PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites by Peachpit Press. While a second edition is allegedly going to be released soon, I have the first edition. To be honest, I was ABSOLUTELY AMAZED that:

1. The code in this book WORKS!
2. The book is SUPPORTED by both the publisher and the author. The author's support site for the book actually contains an extensive list of errata for the very minor errors in it (unlike ALL of the books listed above which DON'T have an errata list). Furthermore, I haven't needed to check the errata because the errors in this book are so minor.
3. The author actually ANSWERS questions to problems on his site.
4. The author is capable of explaining everything, very clearly, and yet conveys a LOT of great information.
5. This book is CHEAPER than all of the one's listed above (and yet it is the ONLY one worth spending your money on).

I have been so, completely, feed up with the incompetent and unethical practices of so many book publishers that I was beginning to wonder if there were ANY books that really taught you how to create a dynamic website. Well, there's one - Peachpit Press. No, I don't work for them and don't know the author - I'm merely a DISGUSTED customer who is tired of spending money on useless books.

RUN, don't walk to buy this book. You will be very, very glad you did.

Reviewer: B. Wise
This book has a ton of practical tips and examples for the real-world usage of PHP and MySQL. It is not the book to get for a basic introduction to the languages, or for an in-depth tour of esoteric constructions. Where it excels is its coverage of a broad range of issues relating to installation, layout and security of your website; database design, layout and manipulation; and lots of particular examples of PHP to solve intermediate-complexity problems. For one small example, every security cheat-sheet says you should strip_tags when processing most form inputs, but how many discuss the problem of making sure the data really came from your own form, not someone else's?

The examples are not just a grab-bag of esoterica, like the " Cookbook" series. They build up as solutions to problems which arise in the course of implementing the usual examples (shopping cart, CMS, etc.). The real "value-added" is that Ullman goes beyond the basics necessary to get a minimal example running. He then goes into the practical follow-on problems that most books never mention.

Minor quibbles:
(A) It uses two-column layout. This makes some of the code nearly unreadable, as the listing comes out almost vertical.
(B) There does not appear to be a companion website of the code.

I have a shelf of PHP and MySQL books, sorted from "shouldn't have bought" to "check first". This one goes directly into the check-first end! Considering the time and frustration saved, it's worth far more than the price.