Rating:  - gr8 book for php5 concepts
Its probably one of the best books for understanding php5 concepts. It describes each and every feature of php5 with appropriate examples and is quite easy to comprehend.
Rating:  - Little about quickly using design patterns in practice
The book gives an excellent introduction in object oriented programming (OOP), even when you want to learn OOP without using PHP. They first describe a clear problem and then show why and how OOP can be used to create a better solution.
(Note that I already had OOP Java knowledge before reading the book.)
The second part of the book focuses on Design Patterns, which I sometimes found not clearly explained; problems unclear and definitions not explained. The OOP part was clearer.
The last part focuses on external tools to ease php programming, like testing, documenting, automatic deploying etc.
A major problem about the book is that it focuses a lot on OOP and design patterns without simply showing how this can be directly applied on a webpage or website. The end of part II feels more like how to make a complete PHP Enterprise framework from scratch yourself, with a lot of details making it a bit hard to crasp. It will take a lot of (initial) effort if you want to apply the enterprise patterns described in this book. In a real project, you probably won't even make a complete framework like this yourself, but take an existing framework like CakePHP of Zend Framework, something where the book doesn't talk about....
Rating:  - Buy both of them!
This book does borrow heavily from the "Gang of Four" book as other reviewers have mentioned. But the latter is the definative book on Design Patterns.
I would recommend buying both books as they do complement each other quite well. The examples in "PHP 5 Objects, Patterns, and Practice" tended be be a bit obscure but were clear and practical.
I recommend this book.
Rating: - Almost Perfect
Zandstra has created a masterful overview of OO for PHP and provides the patterns to go with it. However, the code presented in a number of sections is far from self-documenting, particularly the Enterprise patterns section. A really great additional feature would have been to tie up, broadly, how the patterns interact with one another at various layers of enterprise design; as the book is written, it becomes hard to keep track of all of the objects Zandstra has created over the chapter, and many times he generates a new version of an old object without presenting a full overview of the newer version, making it difficult to see what his revision has actually done. A good example of this is during the ApplicationController pattern, when he rewrites the FrontController object.
I appreciate the practical examples presented throughout, however, and the sections on UML, OO and Practice will very definitely help novice to intermediate designers.
Rating: - PHP + mini version of Gang of Four
Overall a very nice book. Certainly not a replacement for either "Gang of Four", OO design and PHP books, but a nice compilation. Don't expect any ground breaking strategies or patters. Good book for a person who wants to know HOW to use patters specifically for PHP. Pretty vague on WHY.
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