Chris Lea, Wankyu Choi, Allan Kent, et al.
PHP 4, from Wrox publishing, provides a good overview of the PHP Hypertext Processing language, with some nice examples and case studies.
When it comes to PHP, the number of books available is still slim, but thanks to WROX Publishing, we have a new addition that serves as a good reference to anyone starting out using PHP.
Starting out with the first chapter, the authors set the scene for the rest of the book: good details and excellent examples. Like any programming book, the details of function and syntax are only as good as the examples they are used in, and this book uses simple examples and detailed case studies to accomplish both ends.
As you move onto later chapters it was nice to see that many of the screen shots were taken using Mozilla, a strong sign of support for Open Source. Following that is a great explanation of both the TCP/IP and HTTP protocol. It seemed a little random, since developing web pages doesn’t really require a detailed understanding, but it was a nice amount of background info.
The authors spent a good amount of text describing the different data types. This seems a little odd in a loosely type language like PHP, but really gives the beginning developer a solid understanding of what the underlying data types are and how to use them.
Chapter 7 offers a good step by step discussion of the different types of error states and how to test for them, and avoid them. This is where the books covers regular expressions. It seems that regular expression, being such a big part of dynamic web page content, might have gotten a little better coverage.
When it comes to classes, this text is one of the best I have seen. It offers some of the same basic examples of classes I have seen before, but goes into nice explanation of why you would want to use them and how to implement them. This was one of the best sections of the book.
As with the previous edition of Beginning PHP (for version 3), the book includes very solid case studies of implementing real-life solutions in PHP. While this book doesn’t explicitly detail the differences between PHP 3 and PHP4, it does give a good reference of the newer features in PHP 4. All in all this is a great book that will help anyone learn to use PHP or help already knowledgeable PHP developers hone some of their skill.
Beginning PHP4 offers an almost ideal introductory tutorial to one of today’s hotter scripting languages. This book really is everything that the novice needs to start building dynamic Web sites that are powered by PHP4, but old hands at programming also will find in it valuable information.
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