Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL: From Novice to Professional

Essential PHP Tools: Modules, Extensions, and Accelerators

PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide

PHP 5 Objects, Patterns, and Practice

Php Books

Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL E-Commerce: From Novice to Professional

Format: Paperback
Author: Cristian Darie
ReleaseDate: 22 November, 2004
Publisher: Apress
Rating:

Nice, practical approach and very clear and pleasant writing
The book is about building a web shop with PHP5, Mysql and the template engine Smarty and that's what it's about. I must agree with some of the comments posted here that this book provides a narrow view to developing an e-commerce web application.

I can understand some of the remarks that have been made about this book presenting one single approach to building a web shop, which could be seen as a disadvantage. I however see this as an advantage. This book doesn't present a pile of theory and then leaves you on your own. It presents a clear and in my opinion very practical method for building a web application with PHP5 and Smarty.

The thing I just loved about this book is that I understand everything. I am not new to PHP, but I am rather new to the concepts of object oriented programming and template engines. This book very clearly describes a practical way of using these concepts to build your own application. Sure it's just ONE approach to getting the job done, but it's a good one and very clearly explained.

If you have some experience using PHP and some experience with OO concepts I can highly recommend this book. I loved the author's clear writing style and understood almost everything he did because of the nice "How it works" paragraphs after the code examples. This book was totally worth the money and I intend to buy this author's book on C# e-commerce too, because this guy knows how to EXPLAIN things. Thanks to this book this PHP beginner will soon publish his first complete PHP web application!.

Quality book for getting the job done.
The principal behind this book isn't on teaching you PHP by little examples here and there, and then an assimilation of little projects. Having read all of the reviews about this book, I must interject as based on some of the more negative responses. It's a book designed on making a fully function eCommerce web application for usage on a small to medium professional level. The methodologies of this book are a 100% PHP5. Pure object oriented scripting, involving a new standard for database connection via the PEAR DB class, and utilizing the SMARTY template engine. I see there's some negative response in using the SMARTY template engine, as it's deemed "unnecessary" or even a means to hype this open source product.

What people must understand is that one of the contributors to this book is not only well versed in advanced PHP development, he's also an ASP. net developer. Because ASP. net is the "enemy" of PHP, there's obviously little or no amount of understanding how that language works in comparison to PHP. PHP is a pure scripting language, even if it has means to develop objects and classes. It's a very loose, loose "nuts and bolts" language. And it has no inherent structure. You make up the rules. So, there's a tendency for not only sloppy spaghetti code, but also sloppy methodology. Data queries can sit in the same exact page as to where the front end HTML sits. And this can be some very ugly code if you need to get back to it in a few months. Also, if you need to expand or put more advanced features in your site, it'd be almost as an enormous task as just rebuilding it from scratch trying to decipher what you have done with out a structure. Hence a need to separate out the data, the filtering, and the presentation level.

In ASP. net, being a newly developed OO language, the main principal in designing on the front end is called "Code behind" or, in 2. 0 "code beside". What this entails is that when you open up a brand new . aspx (the file extension of a ASP. net page), you're not getting just one flat text file. You're getting a file that refers to various other files that sit "behind" the one that you're about to work on. When you script out your page utilizing the . net classes, it then automates a whole lot of behind the scenes scripting in VB/C# and even Javascipt. In the end, you get these advanced features that you would have had to spend many more hours developing in other methods and server languages.


So, it's quite obvious they are taking a . net philosophy and placing it in a PHP word. What I learned the most from this book isn't so much coding, but rather. . . metholodly. It's utilizing a three tier levels of development: a data layer, a business (filtering) layer, and a presentation layer. This is standard practice in the world out side of PHP.

I see that there are more advanced programmers than I that claim this isn't "professional code" All I can say to that is: This book isn't created for an enterprise level project. This is for a small to middle sized business who has a shoe string budget, but with a highly professional agenda. By the time any business out grows a catalog of this nature, they'd also have the budget to hire some of the top notch . jsp or . net programmers out there too.

So it's a great book for getting the job done. My only complaint is: It has some very strange naming conventions for the variables, sometimes even confusing (such as redundant ones like "product" and "products" I found my self debugging pages because of this problem. But I'd rather deal with that then to have a book with actual buggy code)

It even teaches you how to build the back end Content Management system to update your catalog with. . . (I actually think is even a better application than the Catalog it's self)

I'm using this book for my project, and I'm grateful for all the details and nuances that it's provided for me. My PHP level is full graduated novice, into the intermediate level who just wants to jump to the advanced level with out fretting. This book is a great means to do so.

Incorrect Title!
So really the title should be Beginning PHP 5, MySQL and Smarty. I was highly disappointed that after reading about 1 1/2 chapters the book utilizes something called smarty, which is not mentioned in any of the descriptions about the book. If you are like me and and do not want to deal with setting something else up or use a hosting company that is not open to setting this up, the only use of this book is for reference. I will say it does have some good material that is hard to find or confusing if you are just starting out, some of which I do wish I had this book. For instance order pipelines, credit card processing with data cash and payflow, and adding web services to your site.