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best PHP book? (English)

Posted: Fri Jan 03, 2003 11:38 am
by permutations
I need a really good PHP book as a reference. I want something that will cover the entire language, including databases. I want it to be concise and clearly written. But I'm in a rural area and can't easily get to a bookstore where I can browse. I need to order sight-unseen from amazon.com. What's the best PHP book out there? What do you recommend I buy?

Posted: Fri Jan 03, 2003 11:41 am
by m3mn0n
I learned with "PHP For the World Wide Web" the visual quick start guide by Larry Ulman.

Very good for newbies. 8)

You can grab it at http://www.amazon.com i think.

Posted: Fri Jan 03, 2003 11:49 am
by permutations
Is it comprehensive? I want something as a reference more than a quick start. I'm new to PHP, but I know C.

WROX

Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2003 11:56 am
by phpScott
I think the WROX series rock! :lol:

I got PROFESSIONAL PHP Programming a couple of years ago and it sits on my desk besided as a good reference manaul now. You said you know c so you should be able to pick up the concepts faily quickly.

If you want a comprehensive reference manual I sugest you check out
http://www.php.net as it has everything even if some of the examples they give are a bit weak.

phpScott

Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2003 12:07 pm
by permutations
Yesterday I ordered these two books from amazon.com:

"PHP and MySQL Web Development" by Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
"Php Functions Essential Reference" Zak Greant (Editor), et al

I tried to make a judgement from customer reviews and what I could read of the sample pages. I have another book that I borrowed from a friend:

"Mastering PHP 4.1 with CDROM" Jeremy Allen, Charles Hornberger

This one is okay, but not great. Some of the information is unclear, some missing, and occasionally inaccurate. It's an "adequate" book, I'd say.

The customer reviews of "Professional PHP Programming" were mixed. Some people loved it, and some people thought the authors tended to state opinions as facts and not back up their statements--I got a sense of arrogance from reading customer feedback, but of course I've never seen the book.

I live on PHP.NET and MYSQL.COM, but both often lack background. For example, I have been extremely frustrated in trying to figure out what the stristr() function does. It takes a "haystack" and a "needle" as arguments, but what in heck are those?!? It doesn't say anywhere on the site. (If you know the answer to this one, I'd be interested!)

Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2003 11:04 pm
by laserlight
haystack just means the string itself, needle a possible substring within that string.

Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2003 8:15 pm
by m3mn0n
permutations wrote:I live on PHP.NET and MYSQL.COM, but both often lack background.
That's what this community is for. :D Anything the books or manuals don't give enough detail on, or if you want to ask a question about the subject, anything can be or already was answered here.

And that quick start guide is good only if you want a very solid foundation on the basics, but to be honest you can learn most of that stuff on web tutorials, i only like it because it's quick and handy instead of searching through loads of web pages it's right there on my desktop. I highly recommend it. 8)

Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2003 8:23 pm
by hob_goblin
By the time I bought a book, I had already known PHP pretty thoroughly, but the WROX book I bought looked pretty interesting.

Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2003 3:48 am
by twigletmac
Further to laserlight's definition of needle and haystack, wherever you see this in the manual needle is what you are looking for and haystack is what you are looking for it in.

Mac

Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2003 3:56 am
by twigletmac
Regarding PHP books, we've ended up with a few at work:
  • PHP Developers Cookbook,
  • PHP Black Book,
  • PHP and MySQL Web Development, and
  • O'Reilly's Programming PHP and the PHP Pocket Reference.
When I was getting started with PHP the Developer's Cookbook and the PHP and MySQL Web Development book were handy. I don't tend to look at the books much now except when I don't have access to the internet and then I use Programming PHP as a reference. It's pretty much the same story for the other developers I work with.

Mac

Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2003 8:28 am
by phice

Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2003 4:01 pm
by Kriek
I highly recommend PHP Black Book by Peter Moulding.

Long live PHP.net

Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2003 8:38 pm
by Pakcik_Kantin
I love php.net and zend.com. Very good reference

Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2003 1:43 pm
by llimllib
I was a big fan of O'reillys "Web Database Applications with PHP & MySQL" when I was learning, coming from a C/C++ background myself. It's written for geeks, that's why I like it. On the downside, it's not a complete reference, but I love php.net/function_name.

Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2003 5:50 pm
by jason
First, I have to recommend this book:

Professional PHP4 Web Development Solutions
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... s&n=295223

Mostly because I know the author Alison Gianotto (the female on the cover), and while she was writing her parts of the book, she kept asking me to "look at this and tell me what you think".

My list of recommendations can be found here.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/gu ... 50-7320662