| Review: Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache All in One |
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Best of all, the book includes everything you need to get started on a CD-ROM that covers Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache All-in-One starts reasonably enough with part 1 being an installation and configuration guide for the bundled CD-ROM and covers all three systems, Windows, Mac OS-X and Linux. Each chapter ends with a summary, Q&A, quiz and additional activities section to help bed in what you have just read and this style continues throughout the book. The PHP configuration section includes the basics of programming in PHP with section 2 building on this providing coverage on structure, operators, functions and finally objects. None of the listings are particularly large with focus being purely on the feature being demonstrated. Quite early on the examples are more real world than usual with lots of useful snippets you can reuse when you get down to creating your own code. The real meat starts with section 3 and covers string manipulation in some depth as well as working with forms, cookies and files. Again, the examples are well thought out with things like managing user registration, saving the state of forms, working with other processes and image manipulation using the Thomas Boutell GD graphics library that is included with the current PHP distribution. MySQL comes next. A quick crash course on database design and SQL along with stored procedures and transactions starts things off. The author includes a couple of useful tables covering date/time format strings and values which I can imagine will have a bookmark stuck in for many people. PHP is quickly added back in with examples that create tables, read and write data and process errors. For us, the best part comes next. A large section on various types of project. These include mailing lists, forums, shopping carts and so on. We would have liked to see at least one example with a slightly prettier interface to show how the code can be implemented around a properly designed page but alas the projects stick resolutely to raw function over form. The book finishes off with useful chapters on site management, logging, localization and a little on XML handling. There's even a bit on Apache tuning, SSL, certificates, optimisation and importantly where to look to ensure you are keeping up to date with patches. ConclusionIf you want to learn PHP, MySQL and Apache this is a great book. It covers all the right stuff with a perfect balance of useful features as opposed to exhaustive and often mind numbing listings of every possible option. Having read this book you'll be productive but will still have the option to learn more elsewhere as and when needed. The bundled CD-ROM covering all three major systems is a nice touch. The whole book is well thought out and pretty easy on the brain and was actually an enjoyable read and that doesn't happen too often with techy books! |
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| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 09 October 2007 ) | |||||||||||||||
One of the most popular combinations for web site development is PHP, MySQL and Apache. This book covers the latest and much anticipated versions of the tools (as at August 2006) in the form of PHP 5 and MySQL 5. These tools provide a powerful yet free way to develop applications on the web so any book that covers all three in unison is welcome.
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