PHP Cookbook

Web Database Applications with PHP & MySQL, 2nd Edition

Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL: From Novice to Professional

Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition

Mysql And Msql

Learning PHP 5

Format: Paperback
Author: David Sklar
ReleaseDate: July, 2004
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Rating:

stuck at chapter 7
I'm writing a review about this one because I'm frustrated. I bought an O'Reilly book to teach myself perl & it was great. The first six chapters go by like a breeze for folks familiar with other programming languages (I use perl, mel, c, html, studio). well, that's not entirely true. I couldn't get my apache server to execute any of my php code (I'm on a new mac mini). I followed all the instructions in appendix A to no avail. Finally, I just uploaded my php scripts to a webserver & my code worked there. but that's super annoying because I have to upload my php file every time I want to test it (& sometimes my internet connection is slow). whatever. anyway: when I got to chapter 7 none of the examples worked anymore & it is extremely vague exactly how you're supposed to run some commands. for example: if you want to set up a database, you run the following command only one time:

CREATE TABLE dishes (
dish_id INT,
dish_name VARCHAR(255),
price DECIMAL(4,2),
is_spicy INT
)

but where do you run it from? also, the book relies heavily on using extensions that weren't installed in my version of php. additionally, I'm not sure if certain examples are just there to demonstrate what should work, or things that actually work. ie: this code is supposed to connect you to a database:

require 'DB. php';
$db = DB::connect('mysql://penguin:top^hat@db. example. com/restaurant');

is that actually supposed to work, or is it just an example? if it doesn't work for me (which it didn't), then I have to figure out what's wrong w/my system etc.

another frustrating this is the book recommends using several commands (like running system commands) that my webserver doesn't allow for security reasons. this problem should at least be addressed in the book. hopefully, I'm not just frustrated with php itself because several of my coworkers swear by it. but I've had more luck tracking down answers to very basic questions online than finding them in this book.

It's not good when a book for beginners has bugs in the code.
It was the very first book I ever picked up to teach me PHP. I'm sorry, but this book is just down right lousy. Back then, I had assumed that all books on technical matters would be as close to perfect as one could get. However, as I typed away at my initial pages, nothing was working right. There was constant errors. As a beginner, this is quite frustrating, because you just have no idea as to what you could be doing wrong. Well. . . as I looked online in the errata section for the book, there was so much information as to the corrections to the code, that I might as well have gone to the Errata section for free rather than waste my time and money. Now, with more experience, the bugs are so bluntly obvious as to what was wrong. Not like a typo, or a group of text missing. But I mean, obvious very "simplistic" code that was. . . just the wrong code. And this isn't very professional to have code that obvious be printed. It shows that it wasn't tested.

What's more: PHP5 is a huge evolution to the previous incarnations. While there's some basic coverage of things such as XML parsing, there's nothing about classes, or anything that makes PHP5 different. So, for the traditional procedural style of coding, there's far better books out there on the topic of PHP4, and there's far more valuable resources to get you up to speed in php5 that give you actual projects. .

I liked...
One thing I should mention is that there is a lot of hand holding as the book is really made for beginners. Well written and organized.