Rating:  - Very thorough guide for programmers
As said in previous reviews, this book is NOT for those that have little/no knowlege in programming. I have had an introductory class in C++, and I understood much of what is in the book minus the object-oriented stuff. The book would be an excellent guide for those coming from PHP 4 and wanting to learn new features, as well as those experienced in at least one object oriented programming language.
Anyway, on to the actual book. The book has very little overlap in chapters, making it an extremely useful reference tool. It is not a very good book to straight up learn PHP, but rather a method to your madness. By this I mean that it is more useful to read the introduction and start fiddling in PHP then referring to the book to learn new things rather than reading the book and expecting to be able to write some useful code. Although skimming the book is always good to keep the various functions of the language in the back of your mind so you know what you can do, this will probably impact you very little. There is simply too much information to memorize.
So, here are the pros and cons:
PROS
-Excellent reference
-Very thorough
-Does not meddle in basic computer programming practices/terms
-If book were memorized, you really would be a professional in
PHP with a good base for other languages
CONS
-Does not meddle in basic computer programming practices/terms
-Has very few extended examples, mostly small scripts to do
something trivial
-Spends about 1/5 on concept, 4/5 on syntax and functions
Rating: - This book is definitely in my top 10 PC books!
The author covers every aspects of PHP programming. From the basic syntax (loops, conditions, arrays, string) to more complex topics as security, networking, authentication. He also covers a lot of stuff on mysql database server including its installation with apache, on windows and Linux. There is also sections on server configuration of PHP, Apache, MySQL. The author, obviously, has very good experience in web programming and the tips are unvaluable.
I cannot forget also the "after-sale-service". I had a question regarding "authentication" and I had an answer about an hour after. He says at the beginning of the book that he likes to answer to emails and I can say that it is true!
Rating:  - Meh
It was a decent book. I've been reading this in my spare time during my High School classes... It offers an easy to read guide to beginning PHP. I must admit that there were some parts that were difficult to follow (mostly around the introduction to object oriented programming, as this was my first leap into OOP), but other than that, it was an easy read. Some of the examples in the book have typos, which added to my confusion. I was able to fumble the way through the typos thanks to php.net's online reference. All in all, this book offers a good introduction to the language, but it is by no means a desktop reference that you would want to consult after you get the basics of the language down. I believe that honor goes to php.net.
Rating:  - Errata
I would not recommend this book to anyone. The online errata page falls miles short of pointing out all the errors and typos in this book. The last thing I want to do while trying to learn PHP is figure out why the code from the book doesn't work. And when I got it to work, it was always because of code errors. At first I started marking my book so I wouldn't waste my time again but it got rediculous. Now, all I want to do is sell this book but it's all scribbled over. Nonetheless, I'm NOT keeping this book on my library.
Rating: - Excellent Book!
This book is excellent. The author's style is very readable and the examples of coding he provides are useful.
Don't expect to learn PHP from this book easily if you are not at least a reasonably capable programmer, but what you will be able to do - even if you are a complete novice - is to copy the examples and make them work - which let's face it is the way most of us learned to program - and that'll get you there in the end.
I haven't found a techie book as good as this since I first read Kernighan and Ritchie's book over 15 years ago.
Anyone who wants to learn PHP should use this book it will work for you, C coders will find it especially straightforward. Enjoy!
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