Beginning PHP 5.3

by Matt Doyle

This book is intended for anyone starting out with PHP programming. If you've previously worked in another programming language such as Java, C#, or Perl, you'll probably pick up the concepts in the earlier chapters quickly; however, the book assumes no prior experience of programming or of building Web applications.That said, because PHP is primarily a Web technology, it will help if you have at least some knowledge of other Web technologies, particularly HTML and CSS.Many Web applications make use of a database to store data, and this book contains three chapters on working with MySQL databases. Once again, if you're already familiar with databases in general -- and MySQL in particular -- you'll be able to fly through these chapters. However, even if you've never touched a database before in your life, you should still be able to pick up a working knowledge by reading through these chapters.What This Book CoversThis book gives you a broad understanding of the PHP language and its associated technologies. You explore a wide range of topics, installing a copy of the PHP engine on Ubuntu Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X; other ways you can install or use PHP; how to write a simple PHP script.basic PHP language concepts. variables, data types, operators, expressions, and constants.how to change the flow of your scripts by creating decisions and loops. if, else, and switch statements; the ternary operator; and the do, while, for, break, and continue statements. how to nest loops, and how to mix decisions and looping with blocks of HTML.PHP's handling of strings, or sequences of characters; how to create strings; how to retrieve characters from a string; and how to manipulate strings with functions such as strlen(), substr(), strstr(), strpos(), str_replace(), and printf(), to name but a few.arrays -- variables that can hold multiple values. You learn the difference between indexed and associative arrays, and find out how to create arrays and access their individual elements; array manipulation, including functions such as print_r(), array_slice(), count(), sort(), array_merge(), and list(). You also learn how to create foreach loops, as well as how to work with multidimensional arrays.functions -- blocks of code that you can use again and again. You look at how to call built-in functions, and how to work with variable functions. You also study how to create your own functions, including defining parameters, returning values, understanding scope, and using anonymous functions. Other function-related topics such as references and recursion are also explored.object-oriented programming. You look at the advantages of an object-oriented approach, and learn how to build classes, properties, and methods, and how to create and use objects. You also explore more advanced topics such as overloading, inheritance, interfaces, constructors and destructors, autoloading, and namespaces.how to use PHP to create interacti

Genres: Programming, Web, Nonfiction

840 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[David Sarkies · Rating 3 out of 5]

Already Obsolete
10 November 2018

When I walked into my lecturer’s room to go over one of my assignments I noticed that a computer monitor was supported by a number of books, one of them being PHP 3. This is a problem with these bricks – after a certain point the only use they have is as a door stopper and a means to raise a computer monitor. Sure, one might be able to throw them into the recycling bin, but the amount of money you actually have to fork out for these books sort of means that you are not going to be all that keen on doing so. There is another problem, and that is while this book may actually help in putting you on the right track, you will eventually get to a point where using this book as a reference is no longer an option and it ends up being better to simply go onto the internet and use that as a resource, such as the webpage that just happens to be the PHP manual, or if that doesn’t work then Stack Overflow (though the guy behind the idea indicated that this is more a website for professionals as opposed to beginners).

So, what did I make of this book? Well, I managed to read it from cover to cover, which in part is surprising, but considering that there is a lot of code and sample programs in the book, which I have to admit I simply glossed over, then you could easily cut down on the amount of actual readable materials. The thing with sample code is that it is useful, and if you know what you are looking at you can quickly work out what they are trying to do, but after studying computer science for a year now, I seem to prefer to be given a problem and then having to work out how to solve that problem as opposed to simply copying code straight out of a book. Mind you, he does actually include some practice problems at the end of each chapter, though not to the extent of some of the books that I have seen.

I’m sure we’ve all heard of PHP. It is what is known as a server side language, and originally stood for ‘Personal Home Page’. From that title the idea was to develop a language that people can use to develop their own webpages. That is all well and good, except that you really need to know what you are doing to be able to use PHP – it really isn’t a language for beginners – and there is the added problem of having to develop your site using a server. Sure, there are servers that you can download onto your computer, but the fact that they create open ports that hackers can exploit sort of puts me off using that method. Actually, I guess it was fortunate that I could use the university server to build my assignment, and also that Ubuntu allows me to mount the server on my computer so that I don’t have to fiddle around with downloading and uploading it excessively. Oh, I should also point out that there are a number of websites that you can use to test out your code.

It sounds as if I haven’t said much about the book though, other than to indicate that I have basically read it from cover to cover. Gee, I’m not entirely sure if that is something that I should really be admitting. The thing is that I can’t necessarily say that it was all that useful. Sure, the lecturers do try to encourage us to buy the textbooks, but the thing is that with the internet being all pervasive these days, I sort of wonder what the use of the text books actually are. Okay, there are probably subjects, like Law, where text books are imperative, and a part of me still feels that I maybe need to at least purchase them because I don’t really want to be caught in the situation where I need them but don’t have them. However, the fact that they become obsolete so quickly, and that new editions appear almost annually, with minor changes mind you, is also incredibly painful. Oh, and second hand bookshops (if they still exist) simply will not touch them with a 10 foot barge pole. Is there a text book scam out there? Yeah, there probably is, and in many cases it is just another burdern that students have to shoulder in their attempt to obtain marketable skills for the future.

[Jeff · Rating 2 out of 5]

(For some odd reason goodreads has this book as "Beginning PHP 6" when it actually is about 5.3)

I borrowed this book to rapidly get up to speed on PHP for a small project. PHP is a very easy language to learn when coming from other languages like C#.

I was glad to see the book cover some decent practices such as how to do Model-View-Controller (MVC) type patterns in PHP as well as unit testing via PHPUnit.

[Alpha · Rating 3 out of 5]

PHP is an ugly language, although the author tried his best.