Editorial Review:Product Description:- Written for the budding web developer searching for a powerful, low-cost solution for building flexible, dynamic web sites.
- Essentially three books in one: provides thorough introductions to the PHP language and the MySQL database, and shows you how these two technologies can be effectively integrated to build powerful websites.
- Provides over 500 code examples, including real-world tasks such as creating an auto-login feature, sending HTML-formatted e-mail, testing password guessability, and uploading files via a web interface.
- Updated for MySQL 5, includes new chapters introducing triggers, stored procedures, and views.
From the Back Cover
Interested in becoming a master of the PHP language and MySQL database but don't know where to begin? This best-selling book ranks among the most thorough and practical guides in print, covering all of the key concepts and features, and showing you how to effectively integrate PHP and MySQL to build powerful web sites.
The book begins with a vast overview of PHP's capabilities, starting with a survey of the installation and configuration process on both the Windows and Linux platforms. Next, several chapters are devoted to basic PHP concepts, including variables, datatypes, arrays, functions, string manipulation, and processing user input. Other key PHP topics are also covered, including PEAR, session handling, LDAP integration, the Smarty templating engine, Web services, and PDO.
Next up is a presentation of MySQL's key features. You're first guided through MySQL's installation and configuration process, and are presented with an introduction to its storage engines, datatypes, administration utilities, security features, and data import/export facilities. New MySQL 5�specific chapters have been added in this edition, covering triggers, stored procedures, and views. Along the way, you'll gain insight into PHP's assortment of MySQL functions (using both the mysql and mysqli extensions), and learn how to create and execute queries, perform searches, and carry out key database tasks from within your Web application.
What You Will Learn from This Book
- Install and configure Apache, PHP, and MySQL on both Windows and Linux.
- Accept and process information submitted via HTML forms.
- Authenticate users and track user preferences and data using PHP's session-handling capabilities.
- Process web-based file uploads using the HTTP_Upload PEAR package.
- Create your own RSS aggregator using Magpie, and process XML files in amazingly efficient fashion using SimpleXML.
- Use both command-line and graphical MySQL clients to effectively manage your data.
- Secure the MySQL server, creating roles and restricting access even at very granular levels.
- Effectively integrate PHP and MySQL to create dynamic, data-driven web applications.
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
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Not much recommended
The book is more a glossary of terms that are in the php manuals. I could not benefit from any effort (except on a couple of occasions where something is described in full) that could have been devoted to trying to translate theory into the things you really need to know when actually doing anything you want, such as a search form that contains several select lists that are linked and that you want to pass the selected values to a database to retrieve results etc. You are not going to find an answer for that at all.
Besides I am coming to pages such as 450 that contain php code which does not exist as function (as of 8th nov 08) , for example: session.use_cookies
If you go to the php website you will be told that that function does not exist.
"Sorry, but the function session.use_cookies is not in the online manual. Perhaps you misspelled.."
and it continues Perhaps you were looking for one of these:
session_set_cookie_params
I do believe that the author does know a lot of programming to expert level in many languages, but in this book I have not seen that knowledge translated into something that really helps me do my website. I have made my site by a time consuming consulting on practical pages and advices I have seen on the web and how other people have solved common things, like the one I have mentioned above.
So, I would welcome another book from the author that would take the time to think what we need to do for what, and put his great knowledge into useful tips. I dont mean to lend us intelligence, but by seeing it in praxis, then we can easily build upon.
Rating: 
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One of the bestcomputers books
When i purchased this book, I was expecting a Computer book. To my surprise
the book i purchased contained all the information that i was interested in learning(PHP, MySQL, database) as well as provided a great reading experience.
This book is very interactive and fun to read. The author makes you feel part of the learning process and guides you through learning effectively not only about PHP,MySQL and many tricks of the trade, but also about a lot of other stuff that you most likely did not expect to learn. This will make it this much easier to learn to work with a different platform(Oracle etc.)
Not only do i recommend this book, I urge you to read it as it's a lot more than what the Product Description assumes. This is one of the best computer books that i have ever read, and it's sample code is fantastic.
Congratulations W. Jason Gilmore
And Thank you for allowing me to learn while having fun
Best Regards
J.B
Rating: 
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Reads like reference, not very interesting, too long for not much.
I have first started off programming PHP since 2002 and have built small websites here and there and mostly just 'web tools'. Since it has been some time since I really coded in PHP I decided to get a start from scratch book again, although knowing I still have the basics down. I believe this book is a drag-on, taking up more pages than it should, wasting time in many cases and it reads like a reference book, explaining function after function and in the later chapters PEAR classes/packages, all of which could have just been a URL link in the book to the most up-to-date and online reference for the pertainent resource.
It can get your up to speed with PHP no dobut about that but be prepared for a longer than anticipated read if you do go through this book from cover to cover.
The examples could have been more interesting so the knowledge would stick, and withhold an enthiusiasm on the learner. All of the examples in this book was a bit boring (atleast to me). This book may have been better if you constantly built upon a project, and at the end of the book you would have made something useful by piecing parts together to make a complete working web app. That way you can appreciate, apply and retain the information absorbed so much better. For such reasons I believe the PHP By Example series from another publisher are much better, as those were the books I used in the earlier days.
The author seems to peper advanced topics every now and then in some chapters which would only confuse the beginner. I believe such topics should have been saved for the last few chapters, such that the beginning will be here's how you do it, and in the end this is how you fool-proof it. That way, you get to appreciate the added knowledge rather than the ah-ok and forget it method.
As a word of advice dont judge a book by the number of pages it contains, but you could say in this instance that this book does have alot of information in it if you are primarily testing and developing offline.
Rating: -
A great reference for any web designer!
This is a great book for any web designer no matter what your experience level. It is a great reference and I was able to teach myself what was needed using this book!
Rating: -
Excellent Book
I own several PHP/Mysql reference books, and this one is the most comprehensive of all of them. Just the right balance and written descriptions/explanations and practical applications/examples. I wouldn't necessarily say this book is for beginners, but anyone that's a novice to professional would love this book. I highly recommend the 3rd addition for any PHP/MySQL developer that is looking for a great reference.