High Performance MySQL

PHP and MySQL Web Development (3rd Edition) (Developer's Library)

PHP 5 Objects, Patterns, and Practice

PHP 5 Power Programming (Bruce Perens Open Source)

MySQL (3rd Edition) (Developer's Library)

Php Books

Advanced PHP Programming

Format: Paperback
Author: George Schlossnagle
ReleaseDate: 20 February, 2004
Publisher: Sams
Rating:

A must read for intermediate level PHP Programmers or above
The book is divided into five sections each with several to many chapters. This is a hefty tome, weighing in at 650 pages chocked full of great information about advanced PHP programming. The sections are Implementation and Development Methodologies, Caching, Distributed Applications, Performance, and Extensibility. Where appropriate sample applications are developed to present a point, in other situations a higher level approach is taken.

Covered within various chapters are topics like Error Handling, Unit Testing, Computational Reuse, Session Handling, Benchmarks, Profiling, and detailed information on how the Zend Engine works. While I've used or learned about several of the topics covered within, I think I learned something (whether it was a new approach, completely new information, or a refinement to what I already believed) in every single section.

Ultimately, I think I will become a better PHP programmer for having read this book.

I will be recommending this book to all my friends, and basically to everyone of an intermediate skill level with PHP or above. My friends are going to need to buy their own copy though, as I will not let this one out of my sight.

Nice Survey Book / Not Great
Schlossnagle is a bright php programmer but a lousy teacher. I agree with other reviewers that this is a survey or concept book. Do not buy this book if you are hoping to learn 'Advanced PHP Programming' from it. This book is too superficial in it's coverage of the many subjects. Ie: Schlossnagle's coverage of Object Oriented Programming is less than six pages (why bother?), and does not adequately cover the basics.

This book is good for introducing you to things you may not have thought of before. Ie: I liked the section on exceptions but found it too brief and assumed too much. I was therefore forced to read other materials, including the official php manual, before I had a real grasp of exceptions.

Larry Ullman does a much better job of explaining subjects. His PHP Advanced for the www (first edition) is an excellent book to actually learn from. Unfortunately it is a little dated and the second edition is still a couple months away.

Do yourself a favor, spend your money on another book if you are intending to actually learn 'Advanced PHP Programming' from a book.

The Elevator from the Intermediate Level to the Professional Level

- Looking out to do more programming on a higher level. Read on if you are:

- Used to PHP programming, but not a very sophisticated programmer.
- Ready to read through book texts three times and to read further material that is not included in the book you buy.

Schlossnagle's book is not written along one red line, it covers various topics and allows jumping around quite freely. However, the topics that it covers are highly efficient in helping you advance with your programming skills. They might not quite be what you'd expect from a PHP book, because actually Schlossnagle covers anything that is needed to work with PHP on a professional level.
Consider this list of topics:

- Write clean code
- OO-Design Patterns
- Project documentation
- Performance tunings

This is all not really PHP-only stuff, but it is a great source of inspiration and furthers the understanding of programming in general very much. The latter I find is necessary for everybody who's up to something bigger in PHP.

The PHP examples in the book are - I have to admit - maybe sometimes rather scarce. One would like to see more applications of abstract problems, more examples. But is that what a book is for, to give examples?
I don't think so. For me a book is mainly a source of great ideas from great programmers, anything else is available on the web.

After having bought "Advanced PHP Programming" I purchased other books, the topics of which I would not have considered without reading Schlossnagle's work. I'm just about to write a diploma work and the book is a great reference for anything concerning PHP and development projects.