Rating:  - Frustrating
I'm not new to programming or web programming, but I was new to PHP. This book is much better as a reference than an intro to PHP, however, even there it has its limitations.
I bought this book, read the first 5 chapters (130 pages), and then stopped reading it because I was learning too slowly (ie, reading too many pages and picking up too little usability). As an introductory text, I would rather this book moved at a greater breadth but less depth -- it goes through dozens of specific functions, making it feel like a dictionary. There is also little attention brought to the functions you will be using soon over the ones you will not use for awhile yet. In that sense, it was very frustrating to spend a lot of time reading several chapters and still not feeling like I was getting anywhere or able to use much of the power of PHP.
In my frustration, I decided to revisit w3schools . com, and I found their tutorial immensely useful as an introduction to both PHP and MySQL (I needed both and I needed them quickly). That choice allowed me to start writing some PHP code within an hour and start working with databases quickly as well (nothing is mentioned about MySQL until Chapter 24 of this book).
So now, instead of use this PHP/MySQL book as a learning tool, I use it as a reference. The index isn't ideal*, so it still isn't a great reference, and the MySQL layout has not been helpful. I will be buying some PHP cookbooks to get a better feel for the capabilities of PHP and how to use its functions properly, and I will report back in this review after I find a better reference to recommend over this one (hopefully by mid-January).
*The index is HUGE, but I still have a difficult time finding things I need since I look for a lay-word over the word that is listed. If I already knew the word that is listed in the index, I may not even need to look in the index.
This book was written for new programmers that want a programming introduction to PHP and was not written for web programmers new to PHP. Although I program, I want features of a web programming book when I buy a web programming book.
What I consider a feature of a (good) web programming book: Chapters are split into a quick intro to the most commonly used fuctions of the chapter's topic (5-10 pages) and a longer part for use as a reference (15-20 pages). The book's format has good eye catching sections so readers do not waste time finding what is important if we just want to skim things so we can get into doing some web programming quickly. Commonly used functions are not buried in a bunch of uncommonly used functions.
Rating:  - excellent coverage of essential 'need to know'
Although the title says 'From Novice to Professional' be aware that you won't go from novice to *expert* with this book. It will, however, bring you to a decent functional level (hence professional). Also, it is true that the book assumes a basic understanding of programming. So if you're new to programming, get an 'Intro to Programming' book before or follow some general programming tutorials to bring you up to the basics.
This is a great introductory book to PHP that can as well serve as a reference. It covers many areas, not always in depth, but most times enough to give you some solid bases and get you to actually 'do stuff'. The good thing about this is that at least 95% percent of the stuff covered matter. What that means for you is that you are veered to the right choice of technologies and concepts from the beginning, ready to expand your knowledge in any of the areas.
The book assumes that you want to work with Apache (which you should ;) ) and explains how to set things up in both unix and windows environment. However, even with a book these installations seldom go without problems, so I would strongly recommend to search for a bundle installation like wampserver, xampp or any other that group the 3 applications (apache, mysql, php).
If you're strong headed like me and like to hurt yourself you can decide to go through the pain and install each individually. The tradeoff is that you have a better understanding of the overall environment. My best advice if you choose this route is to RTFM (read the 'fine' manuals). My second best advice is Google.
Chapter 1 and 2 will serve you better as reference later on in your journey as you become profecient enough to actually care about tweaking your environment for features and performance.
Once all is installed and working, the book really starts with chapter 3. There's an extensive coverage of basic language features such as variables, arrays, functions, scope, comments, escapes, selection and repetition structures, etc.
You will gain some solid notions of intermediate level stuff with chapters on file handling, file uploads, session handling, data insertion and retrieval, authentication.
Some chapters bring you to a productive level with more advanced features like object oriented programming, templating (which with OOP offer good precursors to the concepts behind the MVC when you will learn about design patterns in more advanced texts), web services, regular expressions, error handling.
MySQL as well is covered to a workable level, I particularly liked that Jason Gilmore walks you through the creation of a database class to encapsulate your connection and access needs. It well illustrates some of the practical application of OO Programming in the real world. Most serious developers use similar classes in their day to day development.
There are other chapters in the book that may be of interest to some (networking with php, ldap, SQLite).
This is probably not the last php book that you'll need, but it's a great first step to prep you for more advanced subjects. Overall for the beginner this is a great bang for the buck.
Rating:  - This book covers plenty territory well, and no problem with excess!
This has been a great book for me. I've been using & tweaking PHP applications for a few years, and recently had occasion to build one. The fact that this book could also refresh my MySQL skills peaked my interest.
I was impressed with the nice examples, long enough to show the main idea, yet other reviewers are right, there is not much here in the way of fullout precanned applications.
I like that this book seems to be organized so that rather than just read it from cover to cover you can dive in and learn from any particular section. The examples can can be downloaded from the Apress site. At times, when printed examples left details out it would be nice if those details would be included in the down-loadable examples (.css files are used in the HTML_Table demos, but never shown or down-loadable).
After browsing the MySQL sections I was able to create and manipulate the db I wanted in no time.
This book covers lots of ground, I was impressed with the completeness of PHP topics, including things you might not expect, like Smarty templates and the Data abstraction of PDO.
Contrary to other reviews, this book is still not a complete PHP reference manual, it's not meant to be. But if you have this book and a link to a PHP reference website you'll be fine!
Rating:  - This is not a book to learn php, its just a dictionary of functions
If you plan to learn php from this book, i suggest you start looking for another, this is just a dictionary about all terminolgy and commands regards php, but with no excercices!!! well.. there are a few lazy excercises. Its only a description of the methods i mean.. if you are reading about the function echo() you will read something like. "ok, you should use echo in this way "echo "this book sucks", echo is for show you some info on screen, or if you are reading about loops, like for.. "ok. for is for looping! like 1 to 10".. that's it! now you are an php expert!!!.. if there was a posibility to rate this as -5 i would.
Rating: - A really good PHP introduction book
First off, this book is completely useless to you if you have do not have adequate OOP programming background. It jumps around different topics and does not really explain why things are arranged a certain way. This book pretty much assumes you have knowledge of either C, C#, Java techniques - which makes PHP extremely easy to understand. If HTML is all you have under your belt, this is probably a terrible book to buy.
Coming from an adequate background, this book introduces plenty of useful features of PHP and offers a good guide for reference and parameters. Since the book is titled PHP and MySQL, it is expected that the reader should know basic SQL syntax to understand how PHP works with a database.
Overall, this is a good starter book on a very broad topic and it has gotten me started on writing my own scripts.
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