I used this book for one of my MLIS courses. I'm not sure if it was the book, or the course, but I can say that in combination, it wasn't the PHP introduction that I had been hoping for. To be fair, we only used about 8 of the chapters from this book, so there's a lot I didn't cover. Personally, I had a difficult time applying what was in the book to my course assignments, but again, that could have been the course/instructor's fault, not the book's, (and of course I understand that could have been my fault as well, but I swear, I was working hard and trying to figure it all out, and I did for the most part).