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Review from Peter MacIntyre
Thomas Myer has his hands full in his book called "XML Web Development with PHP". This is a large and potentially complex topic, but the author does an excellent job in covering the basic concepts in the early chapters. Then he does an equally great job in the details of combining XML concepts with the PHP Language.
Mr. Myer takes a lighthearted approach to his authorship style and that lends itself to easy reading and therefore better understanding of the subject at hand. The occasional tongue-in-cheek comment intermixed with the text also helps alleviate some of the potential boredom with such a technical subject.
Eventually the author gets into the subject of using XML within the PHP environment. Covering the three available approaches (SAX, DOM, and SimpleXML) is done well and with clear, small, and easy-to-handle examples. I was impressed with the book overall, and since I may be dealing with both XML and PHP in the near future I will keep this book close at hand.
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Could have been more practically focused
The outline for this book needed some review. The ordering of topics seems a little odd to me. The first serious chapters of the book start with XSLT, which is universally considered to be one of the hardest technologies in the XML world to learn.
In fact, it isn't until chapter 7 that you see PHP in the book at all. At which point the author goes over the SAX and DOM models of XML reading and writing. Which, in my mind, would have been the more traditional place to start the book. After a brief explanation of XML and it's usefulness.
Out of the 360 pages of the book only 100 of the non-appendix pages cover PHP. They do it well, but they have to do it at lightning speed since the majority of the book covers XSLT and DHTML.
That being said, there is good coverage of XML work in PHP in this book. And if you are having troubles with PHP and XML then there will be answers here for you.
The writing is good. Which brings up the whole experience by a notch.
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Straight to the point - best way to learn XML for the Web!
If you're like me and learn by DOING, this is the book for you. In each section, the author gets straight to the point he is making and then shows you how to do it, step by step. You start from scratch and end up with a working XML content management system and a head full of knowledge. He doesn't elaborate on all the open ended possibilities till your head hurts - he just shows you how to do it in 260 pages (excluding Appendices). Written in plain clear jargon-free English, and completely free of silly examples. This is simply the best book I've read on this topic.
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Fantastic XML Guide!!
I've done a lot of reviews for computer reference books out there, and I am continually impressed by the sitepoint line of web development books. I have yet to find a book by sitepoint that I didn't find immediately useful or get something out of, and 'No Nonsense XML Web Development With PHP' keeps the tradition of great books going. The first thing that I would like to state is that while 'PHP' is on the cover of this text, this is a little misleading. PHP is the chosen server-side language used in examples throughout, but this book is not just for PHP developers. Having primarily worked in the ASP/ASP.NET world, I wasn't sure if this book would be very useful with my track record and if there is any complaint to be made, it's that I think the PHP part should have been dropped, as this will no doubt cause an audience that would have found this book useful to shy away and pick up a related text without the PHP note in the title.
As for the book itself, the author begins with a history of XML and some basic examples of its usefulness in the everyday world (why it's here to stay). Not only providing the basics and history of XML, the author goes on to talk about what DTDs/schemas are used for and how XSLT can be used to turn an XML document into another XML document, an HTML document, etc. How Javascript can be used on the client-side to access and modify XML is discussed, and then PHP is demonstrated in numerous examples to show how real logic can be put in use with XML data. The author also discusses RSS, web services and how to incorporate XML data and a database.
All in all, this is great book for any individual to learn more about how to use XML in your web site/application. More a teaching tool than a reference, this book follows up on the great history of other sitepoint books and is a highly recommended resource for any web professional that wants to learn more about XML and how it has benefited everyone (and I do mean everyone since XML is so highly integrated with the Internet as a whole). PHP and MySQL users will get an added bonus since this is the focus environment of the book, but as stated right off the bat, you do not have to be an open-source developer to find this text highly useful.
***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED