Rating:  - Just what I wanted
I'm coming to PHP with a strong background in Perl and this book is perfect for me. In my mind, I know what I'd do in Perl to handle a given situation. With PHP Cookbook, all I need do is turn to the table of contents, find the section I need, and there's the solution. The code is well written and the descriptions very useful.
Rating: - Yes, it's a GOOD buy
This review is for the 2nd edition and I got a copy from Amazon for a really good price. The time it already saved me from having to 'think' was more than worth the price. I did download the source from O'Reilly. It a very good source of usable working code that you can just 'cut and paste', and you might find yourself learning something here.That is what it was intended to be.
Rating:  - Must have for all PHP developers.
I find most technical books impossible to read from front to back. I typically just use them as reference books. Unfortuanately most techbooks aren't organized with this in mind. That's why I love the cookbook series. They tend to contain far more example code then typical programming books and are ideal reference books. The PHP Cookbook is an excellent resouce for PHP novices and experts alike. PHP Cookbook (2nd Edition) is exactly what you would expect from a O'Reilly's cookbook. Everyone reguardless of skill level will feel they hit the jackpot with this book because it has tons of sample code and examples that explain how to do just about anything imaginable in PHP.
The chapters are organized according to topic and each subsection is basicly a short how-to comprised of a problem, solution and disscussion section that explains the solution in detail. Topics include XML, form handling, database interaction, session management and a lot more. I find all O'Reilly's cookbooks to be extremely useful and PHP Cookbook is ceartainly the most useful PHP book I own.
Rating: - A reference every PHP programmer should have
This is my first O'Reilly book in the "Cookbook" series. At first I thought this book would probably contain the code and instructions for building a couple of web applications such as a shopping cart or a blog engine. This isn't that book. Rather it provides the reader with code snippets that can be used as building blocks for all kinds of applications. If I had to describe this book in one sentence I would say it is as if the author took down all the "Hmm..., I wonder how that is done?" questions and created an answer key.
One thing I like about this book is that the authors don't waste the first few chapters trying to teach or give an overview of the language. Instead they hop right into the usage of the language that relates to real world stuff.
So here is a brief overview. The book covers PHP 5 and goes over many of the new and improved features. The first six chapters provide recipes for more basic subjects (strings, numbers, dates & times, arrays, variables, and functions. Again, this isn't an intro to PHP, that is another book such as Programming PHP from O'Reilly. This is that book you reach for once you have moved from PHP basics and are ready to build some real world stuff.
By chapter seven the authors are discussing classes and objects. I like using classes when coding in C++, so this is a good chapter for those who like OOP. The next nine chapters go over web stuff starting out with basic things like cookies, forms, and databases. Then the authors go into more advanced areas like session management, XML, automation and web services (REST, SOAP, Mail, FTP, LDAP, and DNS to name a few).
The next chapter [17] is on the topic of graphics. This is a cool chapter if you like to create dynamic images. Things like creating a button image on the fly, or generating charts. Graphics are great to have a knowledge of because everyone likes graphical presentation of data and this chapter can help you get there.
Chapter 18 is on security and encryption which I found rather helpful. No one wants there web application to be the link that allows data to be compromised, and this chapter deals with many of those problem areas. Chapter 19 covers localization, chapter 20 is on debugging and testing. The debugging section does a great job of getting a person setup with the tools they need to properly debug an application including creating your own exception class. This is an outstanding chapter that every programmer can appreciate since every application needs debugging.
The remaining chapters cover performance tuning, regular expressions, files, directories, command line PHP, PERL and PECL. Being a Perl guy I found it interesting to see how the authors utilized regular expressions in PHP. And the chapter on command-line PHP was outstanding; I thought the recipe for creating a PHP command shell was pretty cool.
CONCLUSION
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This book is like having the answer key to most of the random questions a person comes up with when writing code. I found this book to be very useful, it will be one of those references that I keep close, and gets very little shelf time. It is a solid book. It is hard to say what parts I liked best because this is one of those books that you like and must have, but then as time goes on and you use it more and more its value grows. This is an excellent book and I would strongly recommend it the PHP users that want to move to the next level.
Rating: - PEAR DB
This is basically an excellent book. A lot of very useful stuff. Unlike the online PHP manual, it is on this technology called a book. This comes in handy on say a NYC subway train, where you want to brush up on some PHP, or find the solution for something you are working on.
One major warning though: all the database stuff (about 20-30 percent of the book) depends on the PEAR DB class. That is a great thing to use as are many of the PEAR classes. But there is certainly great PHP code that doesn't rely on PEAR DB.
Besides the db stuff the book has great examples with strings, numbers, I/O (files and directories), dates, etc. And being that I used to be a Reptile Biologist - you got to love that Iguana. If nothing else, just buy it for the cover.
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