Book advice?
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derek barnstorm
- Forum Commoner
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- Joined: Thu May 18, 2006 11:23 am
Book advice?
Hi,
I am total novice and I’m about to buy a book on PHP. I actually want to learn PHP5, but I’m under the impression that to use PHP5 I would need MySQL5. With my hosting plan I only have MySQL 4.1.21. I have PHP 4.4.4 and PHP 5.1.2 installed but have always had problems connecting to the data base.
Could anybody give me some advice and recommend a good book which will cover the versions of PHP and MySQL I have? Is it possible to connect to an old database using PHP5?
Thanks,
Des.
I am total novice and I’m about to buy a book on PHP. I actually want to learn PHP5, but I’m under the impression that to use PHP5 I would need MySQL5. With my hosting plan I only have MySQL 4.1.21. I have PHP 4.4.4 and PHP 5.1.2 installed but have always had problems connecting to the data base.
Could anybody give me some advice and recommend a good book which will cover the versions of PHP and MySQL I have? Is it possible to connect to an old database using PHP5?
Thanks,
Des.
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derek barnstorm
- Forum Commoner
- Posts: 36
- Joined: Thu May 18, 2006 11:23 am
Okay, It's just that some of the tutorials that I have done on PHP5 have only gone into connecting to the database one way, and I didn't want to waste my money on a book that was no good to me.
I was thinking about maybe this one:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?vid=ISB ... UI#PPP1,M1
What do you think? And would you recommend learning PHP5 rather than PHP4?
Thanks,
Des.
I was thinking about maybe this one:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?vid=ISB ... UI#PPP1,M1
What do you think? And would you recommend learning PHP5 rather than PHP4?
Thanks,
Des.
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derek barnstorm
- Forum Commoner
- Posts: 36
- Joined: Thu May 18, 2006 11:23 am
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derek barnstorm
- Forum Commoner
- Posts: 36
- Joined: Thu May 18, 2006 11:23 am
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derek barnstorm
- Forum Commoner
- Posts: 36
- Joined: Thu May 18, 2006 11:23 am
- superdezign
- DevNet Master
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Totally stuck? Well, like most programming languages, it's nice to have a basis of other programming languages to work on. If you don't have much or any programming background, then your best bet is to start with a good beginners book.. You know, one that doesn't always compare the language to C++ as though you're already familiar with it.
Library? Search the catalog for PHP. It's free. :-p
Library? Search the catalog for PHP. It's free. :-p
Why don't you install apache on your own machine and then you could run whatever versions of php and mysql you like.derek barnstorm wrote:Thanks for list of books, I will check them out.
I'm just totally stuck where and how to start learning it really - I'm also obviously limited as MySQL and PHP are installed by my web host, so I can't update them myself.
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derek barnstorm
- Forum Commoner
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- Joined: Thu May 18, 2006 11:23 am
Umm the easiest way would be to grab one of the all-in-one packages, but you could (if you wanted to) install them all by downloading and following the instructions provided on their websites. For now, I'd recomment just using wampserver or xampp
I've never used xampp, but wampserver worked well for me until I decided to try installing apache2/php5/mysql5 and discovered it's not all that difficult if you just read the instructions.
I've never used xampp, but wampserver worked well for me until I decided to try installing apache2/php5/mysql5 and discovered it's not all that difficult if you just read the instructions.
Last edited by Luke on Sun Jan 21, 2007 7:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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derek barnstorm
- Forum Commoner
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- Joined: Thu May 18, 2006 11:23 am
- superdezign
- DevNet Master
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PHP is server-side code, so yeah, you'd have to be connected to a server with PHP installed, and I'm assuming you don't own one.
Now I haven't really researched it personally, but I do believe that there are PHP coding programs that allow you to see the results of your coding. In fact, I'm at least 90% sure they exist. Gahh... see now I gotta know. I'll Google it. You should too.
Now I haven't really researched it personally, but I do believe that there are PHP coding programs that allow you to see the results of your coding. In fact, I'm at least 90% sure they exist. Gahh... see now I gotta know. I'll Google it. You should too.