Learning PHP 5

This book is fabulous! I've been programming PHP for some time now, though I've never tackled a large project. And I wasn't really sure how to do it, frankly, until stumbling across Mr. Sklar. After seeing him speak at the last O'Reilly Open Source convention here in Portland, and realizing I'd already read one of his other books, I decided to look at this one.I was quite surprised! Usually O'Reilly's Learning titles are a little slow, but this one is Perfect. You start with the basics, and he's rather good at not telling you more than you really do need to know, and by the end of the book his examples have built on each other to the point that you have a wonderful and flexible library for passing data between forms, your app, and a database. His explanations are well written and not too wordy. You really come away with a much deeper understanding of the language than any other book I've read can provide.I highly recommend this title. I'm giving it five stars. Keep up the great work, Mr. Sklar!

A bit out of date, but everything is well explained.Still I have to say that, being already acqainted to C syntax, javascript and dot net, I learned most about php from the on-line php manual.

I believe the book's title 'PHP 5' is misleading - This is a very basic book about PHP and some things some people do with it. IMHO it is for the absolute novice, the beginning programmer. The book doesn't even touch on PHP's object oriented design or the new features introduced in v. 5. I was disappointed after reading 'Beginning PHP4' by Wrox which was lightyears better. This book lacks any kind of depth. I used it for light bedtime reading but it virtually answered non of the questions I had.That being said, it is well written, easily digestible, nicely structured and aesthetically appealing. It just wasn't a book about learning PHP 5 - it was a book about the general use of PHP.

This was my beginning in php programming and I ended up making dynamic websites running with MySQL plus SQLite. The book starts easy and progresses from there, nicely written.It is easy to use, read and if you have a genuine interest in learning (not buying the book and think that qualifies to then know) it is a great book. I was a complete beginner in PHP when I started with this book and now I can do pretty nifty things thanks to it, so I will say it is well suited for beginners.

The product was as described and the shipping was fast.

There are lot of example codes and explanations for many cases. The book can use basic handbook for beginer or others

While the book is set up so that the reader should be able to learn "through example," in practice it doesn't really work like that. The author provides examples of what piece of code/function does what and then will provide another example of another function, but won't explain why the two are different other than showing the different outputs they have. He also has a bad habit of only giving a cursory introduction to a concept and then including it in his examples as though the reader is supposed to understand the specifics of how it works. I bought this book because other reviewers said that it may be good for people who aren't familiar with programming concepts, while not providing a good resource for those with a programming background who want to learn PHP (specifically what's new in PHP 5). I got this book because I enjoyed O'Reilly's Learning MySQL. That was a great book that made it easy for a beginner to really dive into the subject matter. That isn't the case with learning PHP 5.

Great.

I've bought a few copies of this book for anyone new to my company, it's the best foundation you can get. Just remember it's old and a lot has changed.

I have to say that this book is absolutely brilliant, very easy to follow and understand and makes PHP a breeze to learn. If, like me, you've dabbled with PHP for a while you'll find you don't even need to be in front of a computer a lot of the time 'cos it's all falling into place. You can very easily read the chapters and then use the pc to work through the examples. I'm happy to recommend this book both to beginners and experienced PHP users - it makes a great reference book.

Ich habe mir das Buch gekauft, weil ich immer öfter mit PHP konfrontiert werde, und PHP kurz&gut alleine wenig hilfreich ist, wenn man nicht weiß, wie der Befehl heißt, den man sucht.Ich bevorzuge Computerliteratur in englischer Sprache, und so kaufte ich auch dieses Buch in Englisch. Es ist sehr leicht zu lesen, man braucht keinen Anglistikabschluß dazu zu haben.Es ist sehr gut für Anfänger geeignet, weil es einerseits nicht allzusehr in die Tiefe geht, und auch Themen, die nur indirekt mit PHP zu tun haben (CGI, HTTP), erläuternd angerissen werden, wenn dies notwendig erscheint.Andererseits ist dadurch das Wissen, das man dem Buch entnehmen kann, etwas beschränkt, wenn man schon andere Programmiersprachen wie z.B. Perl beherrscht und schon mal ein CGI-Skript geschrieben hat.An die Qualität von "Learing Perl" vom gleichen Verlag kommt es inhaltlich nicht heran, deswegen u.a. nur 4 Sterne.Der Anfänger muß etwas mitdenken. Auf den Seiten von Amazon USA wird das Buch öfters von Rezensenten abgewertet, weil die Beispiele angeblich nicht funktionieren. Diese funktionieren sehr wohl, allerdings muß man wissen (oder erkennen), daß es sich nur um Codeschnipsel handelt, die mit anderen Codeschnipseln aus anderen oder vorhergehenden Kapiteln zusammenwirken.Wer sich z.B. beschwert, daß <?php echo $variable; ?>alleine nicht funktioniere (in Wirklichkeit funktioniert das durchaus; es führt nur zu keiner erkennbaren Ausgabe), hat das Kapitel über Variablen und deren Definition nicht verstanden. Das Buch ist eben auf einfachem Niveau, aber nicht für Dummies geschrieben.Somit bekommt es eine Empfehlung; 4 Sterne, weil es den Vergleich mit anderen Büchern desselben Verlags nicht immer standhält.Zum einen ist es flauer als z.B. das ganz ausgezeichnete "Learning Perl", darüber hinaus ist es auch auf erheblich dünnerem Papier gedruckt, das einfach billig wirkt. Sowas war ich vom renommierten O`Reilly Verlag bisher nicht gewohnt.

It is an absolute absurdity that in order to rate something you have to write an essay - I have better things to do with my time!

Love it, thanks so much