Rating:  - Good information, awkward reading.
I am an experienced sequential PHP programmer and wanted to make the jump to Object Oriented PHP.
I have already learned OO concepts and programming through various classes. This book has a lot of good information that was exactly what I needed.
The reading can be a bit awkward at times, and requires reading ahead to understand back(?). In other words things are used before their explained, and sometimes their used to explain other things, so you must eventually double back.
PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER - 2 thumbs up.
All in all if you are a PHP programmer wanting to upgrade, its worth the price.
Rating:  - Just OK
I'll agree with others and say that Mike Zandstra's book covers this topic better. The author goes through one example throughout the book (using classes to manipulate a file directory) without fulling explaining how some of the topics work. For example, the author gives a code example, say in english what it's doing to the files, but doesn't explain how.
On the flip side, it is a good book for explaining what OOP is and why it's such and advance for PHP. I just wouldn't use this book to learn it.
Rating:  - Finally I want to use OOP in PHP
Peter Lavin provides us with sound, easy to understand concepts, techniques, and examples in Object-Oriented PHP. This book woke me up to the universe of OOPhp where many other PHP5 books had put me to sleep or utterly confused. If you want to get a grasp on how to implement Object-Oriented programming in your PHP code, I can highly recommend this book. It will get you moving along.
I have used php since v.3 first came out. PHP's initial poor implementation of OOP completely turned me off. I found that I just did not want to do any OOP in PHP, not if that is what OOP is in PHP. Although PHP5 introduced good OOP capabilities I was so entrenched in procedural coding, and have a fairly large library of functions for a framework that I developed for my client websites that I pretty much ignored the OOP capabilities of PHP5 except in some minor cases. And all the books I got on PHP5 just left me scratching my head as to why would I want to go through all the hassle of converting the code to OOP.
With an Amazon gift certificate, I picked up this book, my curiosity peeked again regarding OOP in PHP due to taking a Java class on-line. I read it cover to cover and put it down saying, good book, OOP in PHP might be worth it. Without even thinking about it, I suddenly found myself converting my framework to OOP code and loving it. Peter Lavin flipped the ol' light bulb switch to on and I got it.
Object-Oriented PHP by Peter Lavin did three things, no make that four to get me to want to switch to OOPhp.
1. It explained PHP's OOP concepts simply and clearly. I didn't put the book down thinking it is still all a mystery to me. For example, it didn't throw Design Patterns at me early like most of the other books so by the time I got to his brief explanation of Patterns I was ready for them. Ironically, he only discusses the Singleton Pattern and then very briefly.
2. It provided useful examples of the concepts he presents. I wanted to understand the concepts of PHP and his examples helped me do that. I do wish that he would have provided more extensive code examples (or less truncated) but his explanations of the code examples were sufficient that maybe he really didn't need more.
3. This book is not long. Some may actually feel robbed by its brevity but I found the concise explanation of the concepts with good examples refreshing and understandable. It kept me moving along and not bogged down so that I could finish the book. Again, I sort of wished for more complete code examples but that may have ruined the pacing of the book - maybe a follow-up "Recipe book" from the author to round it out?
4. Finally, and I suppose this will sound silly, but the author gave me permission to use procedural code. This was so unlike many OOP advocates that it really stuck out although it was only one line in this fine book. More importantly, after giving me permission to use procedural code, he showed me why I would rather use OOP techniques instead. And bam! Here I am, converting thousands of lines of procedural code over to OOP.
Thanks Peter Lavin
Rating: - The only book I used to learn OOP php
Thanks to this book now I understand the php code written on OOP style.
After reading this book I was able to develop a very large open source project written entirely in OOP style with php5 and it was not very difficult either.
Rating: - Generally Disappointing
From the perspective of a an experienced procedural PHP programmer learning OO, having read both this book and "PHP 5 Objects, Patterns, and Practice" by Matt Zandstra, I would definately recommend the latter to this book.
Just because Zandstra's book doesn't have a cartoon on the front, doesn't make it less accessible. In fact I found it both more advanced and easier to understand at the same time. I imagine Lavin writing this book one chapter at a time, writing each successive chapter based on what he forgot in the previous. Zandstra's order of explanation on the other hand I found invaluable and thoughtful. When you're trying to make sense of a system by reading about it in a linear (book) explanation, the order in which the information is introduced and its context is very important.
Zandstra's book is also more thorough, and seems to approach implementation from an enterprise (read proper) perspective.
Lavin spends a lot of time on an example of using OO to build a system to display images in a directory. In hindsight, it turns out the design of his code is flawed in some places. Introduction material is no place to be teaching bad habits of any kind.
This book is $10 cheaper than Objects, Patterns, and Practice, but I think if you're serious about learning OO in PHP the extra $10 is worth it for a higher quality book.
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