PHP and MySQL Web Development (4th Edition) (Developer's Library)

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178 Reviews

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This is such a good book that I wanted to take the time to write a review and give it 5 stars, which it richly deserves. The other glowing reviews helped me to choose this book over others, and they were right on the money.

I'm an experienced C/C++ programmer on Windows, but I knew nothing about PHP and MySQL -- and very little about Apache and Unix -- prior to opening this book. I've now read about 80% of it and, in the process, I've built a commercial-grade Website with user registration and shopping cart facilities, which was my objective. Reading this book was a very efficient use of my time -- it gave me exactly what I needed to build a practical Web application system with PHP and MySQL, and very little extraneous stuff.

The main prerequisite for this book is a working knowledge of HTML, and just a little background in procedural programming. Some of the earliest examples use HTML tags for tables and forms, with PHP use thoroughly explained, but without many notes on the HTML. A beginning programmer can learn effectively from this book, but as an experienced programmer I felt that it also worked well to bring me up to speed quickly on a new language.

Another value of this book not mentioned in other reviews are the many good recommendations for organizing your PHP code (applying basic software engineering principles) as your Web application gets larger and more complex. Many, many Websites have been built haphazardly and are now difficult to maintain because they haven't followed the excellent advice in this book.

I did notice the typos mentioned by other reviewers, but after reading 80% of this (867-page) book I feel they are very minor and really do not detract from the book significantly at all.

All in all, this is one of those rare books that is probably worth ten times the amount that you pay for it, and much more if you use it effectively.

I have just started learning some PHP & MySQL development using "PHP & MySQL Web Development" published by Sams and "Web Database Applications with PHP & MySQL" from O'Reilly. Prospective readers might be wondering the difference between the two in deciding which one to buy, so I hope to shed some light on the issue.

Sams: The Welling and Thomson book is more "hands-on" in that it takes the reader step-by-step in developing an e-commerce website. The chapters are organized in a goal-oriented manner: PHP, MySQL, the basics of e-commerce, security, and design of the site.

O'Reilly: The Williams and Lane book is structured in a similar way by showing readers PHP and then MySQL. Examples to reinforce concepts are also provided. While the O'Reilly book also tries to take the reader in developing an e-commerce site, it is a bit more theoretical. Also, there are some differences in focus: the O'Reilly book has a section on using JavaScript while the Sams book has a final chapter on creating PDF files using PHP.

If I had to choose just one book, I would go with the Sams book due to its more gentle learning curve. However, I believe that the O'Reilly book is no slouch, and I will probably come to appreciate it more once I gain more experience in PHP and MySQL development.

One last word about my programming background: I knew a bit of Perl, Java, HTML, and JavaScript before tackling PHP and MySQL. I consider myself to be an "advanced beginner" (an oxymoron, of course). To get the most out of these two books, you should know HTML well enough to read it (you should at least recognize some tags) and it would definitely be helpful if you have some programming experience. You could very well make PHP your first programming language, but I would advise against it. Start with something like Perl (whose syntax is very similar to PHP's).

I highly recommend both books to prospective PHP and MySQL developers who are willing to spend some time and effort.

You never know what your really going to get when you buy a book online but I am totally happy with this purchase. This book offers real world examples and full source code for many of the PHP/MySQL projects developers tackle on a day to day basis. Details can be found on: Image generation, cookies, user authentication, shopping carts, content management, mailing-lists, PDF document generation and a lot of detail on how to set up and install both PHP and MySQL on your server. The authors do not only show you the code but explain what's happening so that you can customize the scripts for your own use and they do this very well. This book is aimed at intermediate web developers who are familiar with HTML, some type of programming (ASP, Perl), but you certainly do not have to be an expert programmer to understand what's going on. All and all-the best web programming book I've bought, period.

Although it has a purple spine, this book contains everything a person would hope to know about php and mysql. From the basics of php 4.0 to mysql privleges, Welling and Thomson provide quick easy and painless reading.

It provides it's message to the windows crowd, which in itself is a beautiful concept; usually books about php and mysql are directed at unix users (rightfully so, I admit). I am a user of windows, and the php installation instructions for either the windows build of Apache or MS IIS were definately adequate.

The php crash course chapter is an especially good reference. For example, other books I've purchased on php ignored some of the useful variations of the if-then control structure. The chapter on php session control was beautifully simple, although at first it came as a surprise, since other php books didn't cover it (session control was first implemented in php 4.0).

I did have some difficulty installing and using the gd image library, since most of the sites listed in the book didn't exist. Windows users, just remember that the php.ini file needs to be edited (remove the semicolon before the gd dll) and the gd dll needs to be moved into the php working directory. Of course, maybe that's intuitive and I'm just a moron.

In conclusion, it's a good book.

With the newest versions of PHP and MySQL, anyone thinking of building a database driven web site would have to think long and hard about building it using anything but PHP and MySQL. There are just three reasons for this: First the software is damn good. It's solid, fast, reliable and feature rich. Second, the software is basically free. Yes, you can buy support packages for it, but even if you do you are paying a lot less than for commercial packages. Third, the level of documentation that you can get for the software is as good as anything you can get for the commercial packages.

This book is a good example of the latter. It is a specialized book oriented to building a database oriented web site using these two packages. It accomplishes this task exceedingly well. Limited to about a thousand pages, it's enough to get you through the first year or so of building your web site.

I purchased this book after having carefully studdied many books about the subject. I fell for this book, simply because it got the best rating and when I went to my local book store and scanned it, I had to own it. It starts out with a PHP crach course (syntax and semantics), moves over to cover string manipulation, expressions, function calls etc. All in all, very simple stuff that you should be able to grasp easily, are you known to other high level programming or scripting languages. Then you get introduced to basic database design, dynamic image generation etc. What makes the book special however, is that the whole second half of the book, shows you real world examples of things like session control, user authentication, shopping cart management, a mailing list manager, an email web-interface, web-forums and more. This second part is what you really will learn from! The book should be called "Real World PHP and MySQL development." The only little thing that I miss in the book, is a reference list of all common functions for PHP. I am not complaining though, the book does not state to be a reference book!

* Note: I refer here to both the first and second edition *

This is the book I purchased to get started on server-side scripting; it probably says "user-level intermediate-advanced" to avoid lawsuits; I had no prior knowledge of server-side programming, and no trouble understanding.

It is divided in four logical parts:
(1) PHP tutorial
(2) MySQL tutorial
(3) General discussion on server-side scripting & e-commerce (very interesting)
(4) Projects

This book does an excellent job at explaining PHP & MySQL to the beginner, and goes much beyond the frustrating "intermediate" level where similar books often stop. It assumes a working knowledge of HTML, which everyone interested in this book already has in all likelihood.

It is cleverly written, clear and concise. The authors share their extensive experience with the reader, notably in the third part where common pitfalls are discussed.

The index is well done, which makes this book an excellent desktop reference in addition to being a good tutorial.

The CD contains all the code for the examples, the complete book in searchable PDF, and other goodies like the Apache Server and PHP.

My recommendation: go to phpide.de and download PHPTriad to install & configure Apache/PHP/MySQL on your PC, or have someone knowledgeable do it manually for you to avoid headaches.

The only reason I can't give five stars to the first or second edition is the number of mistakes/typos in the code examples. The upload code doesn't work, PDF generation uses obsolete functions even in the second edition, etc.

Although most of the code supplied as example functions properly, it is annoying to know that a book written to teach you to program contains errors in the programming examples.

The second edition adds a chapter about XML and removes outdated URLs. Otherwise, it is the same book (including code typos).

Combined with the PHP & MySQL manuals available for download from their respective sites, allow a week or two of reading and you should have everything needed to start working.

All things considered, I strongly recommend this book.

PS: if your heart balances between ASP & PHP for server-side, consider that more servers are PHP-enabled, since it is cheaper (free).
If you want to stay in known terrain and use JScript, than go for ASP.

This was the first book I ever bought on PHP/mySQL. Usally you can find a good book on PHP or mySQL, but never both. Well, this is great AND it has both. I don't think I would be where I am today programming PHP if it wasnt for this book.

Easy to follow and with great examples. I keep it by my side all the time!

In open source usage, the book describes a powerful and popular combination of PHP and MySQL to build websites. Each program has several texts devoted solely to it. But it is in the interaction between the two that often developers need assistance on.

The book does start with chapters exclusively on explaining PHP, and other chapters on MySQL. In themselves, you might find these to be concise and useful explanations.

But the meat of the book is given in several chapters, where each chapter is devoted to making one common application. Like constructing a shopping cart. Or a Web-based email service. These are things that you have surely experienced as a user. Now you get to see how to code them in PHP and MySQL. Which explains some of the book's size. There are 10 chapters in this section. Enough to give you plenty of examples to draw ideas from.

I bought this book when I was just getting started on a website for my neighborhood, and although I am an experienced developer with knowledge of ASP, JSP and SQL, I had not personally worked with PHP or MySQL before.

In less than a month's time, using only this book and the PHP language reference (included with PHP) I was able to build a website with user logon, discussion forums, user-customizable profiles with the option to upload pictures of themselves, and online web email. I wrote all of this from scratch, using the examples from this book, and this book alone.

For those of you who are learning to develop "live" (ie. non-static HTML) websites, and you've chosen to use only open-standards technology to do so, I can't imagine a better book to assist you than this one. It does a fantastic job of explaining things in simple terms, and provides a very good overview of PHP and MySQL, covering the subject matter clearly and concisely, without a lot of additional, unnecessary verbage.

I was originally going to develop my website using JSPs, but learned that my ISP did not support JSPs, only Java servlets (!), so I was forced to look at PHP as a faster, easier way of developing the site. It has been an exciting learning experience, thanks mostly to this book. The book is worth the price, and then some.

I don't write alot of reviews, and hardly ever give 5 stars, but this one is worth it. This massive text (800+ pages) includes all of the basic elements that either a beginner or an advanced user may look to a text for assistance with (note: these subjects, PHP and web databases, are traditionally self-taught at this time, a good text is ESSENTIAL!). The CD includes open source licensed Apache, PHP and MySQL (Linux and WIN), and all code from the book.

The book format is logical and good for self-pacing; early sections teach PHP language features (including arrays, regular expressions, objects/classes), then MySQL language and calling constructs (RDMS design theory, SELECT, UPDATE, INSERT, and advanced SQL). Later chapters discuss implementing user authentication and security, session mgmt and other advanced concepts. Final chapters (over 250 pages) provide ample example web database applications that probably cover about any project you would use these languages for (including shopping cart, content mgmt, web-based e-mail, mailing list mgr and a web-based forum). The final chapter describes using PDF to format text documents (my ISP does not provide this module therefore I skipped that section).

I recently began a private web database project and made the decision to proceed open source (PHP, MySQL) versus going the Microsoft way (ASP, SQL Server). This meant I had to learn PHP and MySQL. I purchased 4 books and the Welling & Thomson text was most utilized of all. My only gripe is they don't provide summary reference sections on PHP and MySQL functions / commands. You will probably just download the official user manuals for these anyway.

This book is well worth the price, IMHO.

I ordered this book in the hope to find a cleanly structured book aiding me in real-world web development. Having read all of Ben Forta's books as well as lots of other web development books, I was expecting a thorough treatment on what PHP and mySQL can do to aid me in my PHP applications. Here are reasons why this book does not deserve the five-star ratings it's been getting: - The real-world functions (such as Mail()) are incorrectly described, leaving the reader no other option than reading the manual; - The string chapter in the manual is more thorough and written more fluently; - The coding conventions used in the book set a bad example for the reader, even though they are preaching to be consistent; - There is no thorough function reference; - The book is thrown off-balance with too much "soft" content such as web usability and e-commerce, which should NOT be in the scope of this book; - The writing style is inconsistent and not always fluent.

I'll keep the book but won't heartily recommend it. They should copy Ben Forta's framework for a more clear description of PHP.

I bought this book after reading all the rave reviews. At the time I was a beginner PHP programmer with very little programming experience. When I got my hands on this book I was very excited, until I got past the crash course.

For a beginner, this book has too many pages without examples. It just goes too deep. For me, I need a page of description and then an exercise to see how things work. There are sections of this book which go on forever without examples, and the writers say you can do things this way, or that way etc etc. This is just confusing and too dry to hold my attention.

I have quite a few PHP books, 90% of which I have regretted buying. Online tutorials are much better of you want to learn from scratch, you'll pick up more techniques and develop a lot faster by doing these tutorials, most of which are free. One book that does stand out as being an excellent PHP book is 'PHP Solutions' by David Powers. From start to finish this is just a great book. Clear, concise and just a few paragraphs of text before you start exercises. In the space of a couple of weeks I really felt like I had improved, and it reinforced much of what I had learnt from doing online tutorials. 'PHP Solutions' is the best out there for PHP Development... Welling & Thompsons book falls way short in my opinion.

this is not even close to a 5 star book. Part of it is not really the book's fault, however. Because PHP is continually changing, a lot of the functions get upgraded. On more than one occassion, I followed what the book suggested to a tee, only to find out that it did not work (I currently use PHP 4.2.2). The functions suggested for session management and file uploading (to name a few) simply don't work with this version of PHP. Also, this is a typical beginner's book and does not tell you how to solve problems that you'll run into in real life. For example,

1. There's no mention of file downloading at all. Ok, I've done file downloads in other languages, so I was able to figure it out. However, if you're doing real projects, you'll be asked to do this eventually. This book does not explain this at all.

2. Session management and cookies are treatly lightly. Setting cookies can get pretty detailed especially when you're working with multiple domains.

3. Regular expression coverage is .... If you're used to all of the functionality that Perl has to offer regarding regular expressions, you'll feel handcuffed using this book to do regexes. Backreferences? Positive and Negative Assertions? Nice concepts, but you won't find them covered in this book.

4. Weak coverage of MySQL date functions.

Look, I could go on and on. No coverage of PHP and XML whatsoever! Forget about using the book as a reference to SQL. MySQL (until I think 4.2) does not support sub-selects. You can get around this using things like left and right joins. How is it covered? "Left Join: Tries to match rows across tables and fills in nonmatching rows with NULLs. Use in SQL with the LEFT JOIN keywords. Used for finding missing values. You can equivalently use RIGHT JOIN." That's right! Almost 900 pages and I just quoted the entire coverage of the subject! No examples. No examples. No explainations of the above. That's it!

Unfortunately, I continually find myself (and I mean continually) going to php.net, mysql.com and devshed.com to get answers to questions that should be answered in a book that I paid money for. If you are new to app servers or programming in general, this book will give you the basics and let you get your feet wet. If you want to create a simple web form and submit that data into a database, for the most part this book fits the bill. It explains installation of both PHP and MySQL pretty well. My overall comment, however is that this book will give you nothing that's not easily obtainable from the three sites I mentioned above. And more importantly, it does not give you the type of info that will help you get real projects done. When I'm looking at someone's code and s/he uses syntax I'm not familiar with, I need to be able to figure it out using the book. Time and time again, this book failed in that regard. If I didn't know it, this book certainly was not going to help me.

Wow! This is a well written, well planned, and fantastically useful book on how to set up a database-driven web site. (If you don't know what a database-driven web site is, this is the book for you.)

The authors, Luke Welling and Laura Thomson, have clearly done their homework on their audience. They have written a book that provides easy, step-by-step instructions on creating the components that web site owners want, including:

- Password protect your site - how to create user authentication. Includes a section on generating random passwords and mailing them to the user.
- Build a personalized shopping cart
- Personalize web content based on session control
- A content management system - a web-based system for non-computer users to add new stories without touching an HTML editor
- Mailing list manager; mail HTML or text-based mail to everyone on your list automatically
- Web forums for user discussions
- Automated content retrieval off of the web (get stock quotes automatically from other web sites, etc.)
- Setting up simple file transfer functions (FTP) for uploading files
- Automatic simple image generation (i.e. buttons and graphs) - the ideas in this chapter can be easily extended to making page counters, etc.
- Generate personalized PDF files automatically (useful for creating printable, non-editable documents)

In addition to going over the basics of PHP and MySQL, the Authors provide some excellent discussion about setting up good quality e-commerce sites and the use of encryption.

There are a couple of minor shortcomings in this book. The Authors provide only a cursory treatment to using SSL (secure socket layers) in web transactions. SSL is an essential component of modern day e-commerce, and I would have liked to have seen a more detailed discussion about setting up and running SSL; oddly, the authors recommend buying a $1000 server package with preconfigured SSL rather than using the open souce SSL package which is available from the Apache website. Secondly, the slant of the book is angled towards Unix/Linux systems (which is not unexpected, as most servers run off of Linux/Unix); Windows users will need to make slight, but not scary, alterations in code. In most cases, the files can be copied straight off the CD and will run equally well in Unix/Linux versus Windows systems.

In summary, this is an outstanding computer book on building a useful and interactive web site, powered entirely by free software. The authors take a complicated subject and make it easy to understand. Rather than focusing on abstract theory or dabbling in mundane details, this book provides step-by-step instructions that lets you set up a full-featured and powerful web site with a minimum of hassle.

This book will help you understand everything you want to understand about PHP and MySQL, period.

This is the second book I've read by Luke Welling and Laura Thompson, and I have to say that they produce incredibly well-organized and well-conceived books that teach whatever subjects they tackle remarkably well.

I have read many other PHP books on the market, and this book is covers the topic, both in breadth and depth, far greater than any other book I've read.

You may have heard that MySQL and PHP come with significant security considerations. Try to find a plain-english explanation of these security considerations in any other popular PHP book out there, and you'll be disappointed. After reading this book, you will be able to make informed security decisions that don't simply parrot the prescriptive security measures described in other texts.

Beyond simply recommending this book, I recommend the authors. If you're considering *any* topic that this writing duo has addressed, I recommend them, hands down. Their writing style is clear, the examples are methodical and concise, and their explanations are extremely informative!

I read page after page of glowing reviews for this book and of course decided this was the best book on the subject and ordered one right there. I got my new book, eagerly read the first hundred pages and thought, "yep, this is the one."

I knew nothing of PHP or databases or even programming, but I like to think I'm a quick study. How wrong I was... at least so far. The problem with this book is that there are a lot of things included that just don't matter, and the most basic important things that do matter (like retrieving data from the database --the whole point of the book I might add, and inserting binary files into a MySQL database) are either MIA or get a vague and very limited two-page treatment and end right when it starts talking about what you NEED to know. The index for this book is completely unmanagable (try finding PHP's "Select" function, I dare you -- it's listed under "rows" --does that make any sense at all?) and it is a bit outdated as well. If you use phpMyAdmin to set up your databases, this book won't help. Every example assumes you use the older "MySQL monitor."

Another thing that bothered me was the way the authors say every little piece of code is "easy". We have very different definitions of "easy." Their definition makes me feel like a moron. Also you should know a little programming before reading this book. There are a lot of phrases like "This should be familiar to C programmers" and "[whatever] functions in php much like it does in Perl."

In the end, my dissapointment is my own fault because the book says right on it: "Intermediate -- advanced" If you don't know anything about programming, go with another book or at least read up on C or Perl before you tackle this one.

I've been a programmer for a years. This book is geared towards a beginner. Not just at PHP or mySQL. A beginner. Period.

If you know programming and wanted to bone up on PHP and mySQL, look elsewhere.

I am.

I wouldn't know how to rate a beginner book, so if you are a beginner, read the other reviews.

As a beginner book, I guess it's ok. For veterans, it's not going to get you going fast in PHP.

Your eyeballs will strain moving back and forth and your brain won't get fat with knowledge.

I wish books were forced to be rated. Even a ratio of eyeball movement / information would be helpful.

Next time, I'm going to go down (like drive) to a bookstore and check it out before I buy online.

This book is large and comprehensive, but assumes that the reader has some previous knowledge or can learn really quickly.

I would definitely recommend it.

It has good useful examples of realistic work situations. It has source code in the book and on the CD which works without errors. It is a big book, with lots of stuff in it.

Previously, I recommended everybody to buy Professional PHP, which is a really good book, but this one is better. I gave Professional 5 stars, which means I should give this one 6 stars.

PHP and MySQL are probably the most pervasive add-ons to Apache web servers across the web. Certainly they are both easy to acquire and common on a large range of web hosting systems, including several extremely low cost ones. They also fit together extremely well.

This book demonstrates how well. It starts out with a quick course in PHP (OK, 160 pages is hardly quick but it seems to move along at a good pace), follows it up with a brief look at MySQL before a short digression on E-commerce leads into building authentication and secure systems with the two tools (a marvellous place to start when you're thinking about commercial-grade web systems.)

After some more advanced PHP the book then goes on to give marvellous examples of web applications, a shopping cart, content management system, email service, mailing list manager and web forums. Finally it has a good chapter on generating PDF files using PHP.

Overall the book is well written, well structured and can take someone with some programming knowledge and no experience with PHP and MySQL all the way to the development of full scale database backed web applications.

That's not to say that the book doesn't have some shortcomings. You will want to have some program design experience and preferably some experience with database design as these are given short shrift. The book also lacks examples and discussion of some of the less database intensive parts of PHP and some of the more obscure taks you may need to perform. However it does provide an excellent introduction to these two products for someone, like myself, who already has some experience. It must also be added that there are some typographical errors in some of the code examples, not too many and not too serious but in this day and age why can't authors cut and paste from running and debugged code, Kernighan and Plauger managed it more than twenty years ago in "Software Tools."

I would recommend purchasing this book and "PHP Developer's Cookbook" for the perfect PHP bookshelf. If you wish a fuller understanding of MySQL and database design then add "MySQL" by Paul DuBois and Michael Widenius.

I rate it as four stars rather than five, only because it is not perfect and so many others have given it five.

This book is mainly split up into 4 sections: php, mysql, security/e-commerce and then advanced tips and viable applications. For those people who are hoping this book will replace any combination of php and mysql books-it doesn't, but it is worth buying anyway. The organization of the book is very good and each section flows smothly into the next.

The fact that the two languages work very well together make this book easy to read and understand, although there was some missing information such as using php with javascript--which is becoming more common as a way to relieve stress on the server.

The section on security is excelent. Most of the examples and code snippets are usefull and have insight, however there are a few typing errors that the novice may miss and not be able to use the code correctly. For example, the author warns that it is easy to forget to put the dollar sign ($) in front of variable names and backs his point up by forgeting it himself a few times.

Another mistake is a snippet of code (on page 88) that, if used as it is in the book, will cause the browser to lockup because it is one of those never ending loops that uses up the RAM.

Besides these few things, the book is good, the CD is very helpfull when there is a need to check the code--sometimes code is put together bit by bit, spaning over several pages, and it is up to the reader to put it together, but like I say, it is mostly understandable and the errors are more or less easy to spot.

I have found this book to be the best book on this topic. Yes, I have read and own almost all the others. This book covers many of the little things that are left out of the other books, and I am glad of the things that they left out of this book.

They left out the long indexes full of mostly useless stuff and the chapters and chapters of functions that some of the other books feel like they need to include while all that is online at php.net.

I feel that this book is much better than the "core PHP programming book" and the only book that comes near it is the MySQL/PHP Database book by Greenspan and Bulger.

If you have the Greenspan book you might be upset that many of the walk-though examples are nearly the same but this book adds more. I found it easier to understand the examples on the CD because they give a good explanation of what each page of the web application does.

Certainly a winner.

Here you have this 3 inch thick book chocked full of information just waiting to be digested. In the introduction, the authors tell the reader that,"This book will teach you how to create interactive websites from the simplest order form through to complex, secure e-commerce sites." Well that is all good and fine, but what they leave out is the instructions on just how to accomplish that goal. What I mean to say is that they do not tell you where to place you files in order for the server to do its job. I think some basic instructions would have been great. I was not even able to get through the first exercise because the authors presumed that I knew what I was doing. Well that is why I purchased this book; to learn just where to put my files and how to get results.

So, if you are like me and have not idea of nuts and bolts of php you might what to search else where for a book with more basic instruction. Atter that, then you might want to progress to this book.

Yes, the book helped me with my first few contracts in PHP and MySQL, but what it didn't provide me with were good coding techniques. I've learned so much since from other books and developers, and looking back on this book and the code they provide as examples... well, I can't believe that people actually paid me for that early work.


------- what I wrote about it before

I owe my last 3 contracts to this book. It's that simple. I picked it up after setting up my BSD development platform and I was ready to go. If you're not a programmer, don't worry. The first 150 pgs are dedicated to you. It teaches you the basics of strings, variables, functions... everything. Even if you're a programming whiz, it's also good to have a refresher from time to time... hell, it corrected a few of my bad practices.

It walks you through the installation process of mysql and php on both *nix and windows systems in the appendix, and learning mysql from command line was simple after reading this book. For the more advanced people, you ever built your own shopping cart from scratch? Well, you will about 1/3 of the way through the book. It also provides insightful reading about security, best practices, etc. that are well written and necessary if you are to take what you learn in this book seriously.

I highly recommend it.

This is an excellent book! It took me from a complete novice (the last programming experience I had was with structured BASIC back in the 8th grade, over 15 years ago) to developing complex, secure, database-enabled sites. I couldn't have done it without this book. The sample projects are excellent. I owe all my PHP/MySQL success to the authors of this book.

One of the great things about PHP is how much good documentation there is online. The official manual at php.net is great, and so are many of the unofficial tutorial sites. Sometimes though, it is nice to have a book in your hand.

This is one of those books. It provides useful examples and commentary at a depth you do not normally see on a web site. It is up to date, and includes PHP4 functions like session control, although I did not see a mention of MySQL transactions which were added recently.

I have a few other PHP books, this is not the only one I like, but it is the most recently published and therefore up to date of the ones I like.

The sample code usually works straight away, but authors of PHP books should be more careful to specify what settings they use that makes the code work. Do you need magic quotes on, do you need extra modules installed etc? This book is pretty careful, they always tell you the big things, like extra modules, but as I already had PHP installed and did not follow their install instrucitons, sometimes different configurations meant code needed to be fiddled with.

There is a bunch of books related to PHP and/or Mysql.
I bought 4, one about Mysql only, one for PHP only and 2 about Mysql+PHP.
Surprisingly, this one is the best - even better than the dedicated ones.

The author starts by introducing PHP, follows Mysql, then elaborates on making projects with examples, guide to build Php+Mysql projects and use of advanced features.

Just start from page one and follow the explanations, examples and advices - you are a php+mysql programmer in no time.

A ton of information in easily read words and format. This is not a beginner book though they have the "crash course" section, but I picked it up after PHP Essentials and I am having no trouble following and understanding the text and examples.

My hardest problem with PHP is that I'm "a designer that does programming." This book makes that transition much easier by not talking over my head. As I work through this book, I get more and more excited about being able to use PHP and things that were never clear about dynamic web sites become more and more clear. And because the examples are real world, it makes it easy to incorporate the what they're teaching into my current projects.

Excellent book - WELL worth the dollars.

I've checked out many PHP books. Unfortunately most of them has a slow pace geared toward the beginner programmer. I have experience in C programming. I don't have time to do another "Hello World". The crash course in PHP from this book is great. It tells me everything I need to know about the syntax usage of PHP. It even shows numerous tables depicting syntax examples as a great way to look up references. The PHP crash course section gets to the point. No fluff, no cheasy long paragraphs to explain what is declaration or initialization. It is definitely a book for people with programming experience.

This book will save me a lot of time understanding PHP. I've only read a few chapters but it has already gotten me much farther then some other books I've tried.

This book walks you through some very applicable examples of PHP and MySQL. This and SAMS Teach Yourself PHP in 24 Hour have taught me so much about PHP. I used them to create a gaming website back in high school (knowing nothing about programming to creating a website with a database of users, a calendar, message board, and even a score and ranking system).

I now write PHP code for a living through college. This book was DEFINATELY a valuable asset to my learning PHP. (also, for you newbie PHP people, be sure to use PHP.net if you can't find a function... it is like a function dictionary - it's amazing).

This was the first book of 7 or so that I purchased and I think it's by far the best. The authors clearly explain various aspects of both PHP and MySQL. The book is one of those rare ones that does a great job for the beginners and winds up being a great reference for somewhat and mostly seasoned developers. I keep rereading various parts over and over and it's very helpful. If I was going to recommend just one book on the subject - this would definitely be it.

This book is God. I've ordered a lot of books from Amazon over years about everything from Flash animation to Unix system administration and this book is seriously fantastic. It starts off with some theory explaining PHP and MySQL basics (all brand new for me), then gets right into hands on tutorials with PHP for about 100 pages, followed by about 50 pages of SQL tutorials, then puts them together with excellent tutorials for the next 500 pages or so. I feel like someone should give me a diploma, or a really high paying job. I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone who wants to jump in the deep end with database driven web application programming. I wish more computer books were organized this way.

I purchased this book after reading reviews on 3 different websites for it. The montra seemed to be "great for beginners or folks who have very little programming experience". That's me! I found the book to be extremely helpful...through chapter one. It explained basic concepts, syntax, etc. After that, it's like the author assumes that you have become an intermediate to expert programmer. He no longer tells you "insert this code at the bottom of (insert file name here)," but starts in with "if you program in C, then this will be very familiar to you."

There are also errors. Granted, you can go to the authors website and find the addendums, but when the addendums also contain errors, it's very frustrating (like when he spells the word "tire" in the book and then as "tyre" in the "corrected" code on his website.

Heed the books user level category....intermediate to advanced programmers. Be warned, if you are a beginning programmer in any language, this book will just confuse you and frustrate you to no end no matter what others say...

This is a very useful book. If you're a web developer, and you're starting out with PHP, it will do wonders. It covers many important things such as creating a successful shopping cart, web based e-mail, web forums, and working with files such as PDF and images. What I enjoy most about this book is that it teaches you PHP and MySQL in a very coherent manner. In the beginning, it has a thorough introduction to PHP and its list of functions and it even covers PHP classes. It does this in a clean and understandable manner that is easy to follow. The chapters on MySQL and databases are also well put together. It covers the theory and implementation rather well using real world examples. Overall, it's an excellent book. If you're already a programmer, you'll fly through the chapters without any hassle.

I bought this book based on the recommendations of the previous reviews you see here. Admittedly I found the setup section somewhat confusing for those wanting to setup their php and mysql on Windows XP, eventually I sought advice from various forums and now run php as an ISAPI module in IIS, which works beautifully. To be fair the packages used in the setup are on the books CD's, but are now somewhat dated.

However the book is still one of the best I have read and covers a large scope of work for the beginner to the advanced php + mysql backend applications, with extremely well structured examples and references that will get you up to speed with the more challenging mainstream applications later in the book.

The sections on MySQL is very comprehensive but well researched and presented. Other topics include OpenSSL, GD support for Image manipulation and PDF file generation.

As a web developer for nearly 3 years, I know that this book is WAYYY too comprehensive. It is trying to be a reference book/tutorial book in one, which never works.

You buy one book as a good solid tutorial, and another as a good solid reference. You do not buy one to serve as both, because you always end up with deficiencies.

I still use this book, and even though it delivers solid coverage on this subject, it is just too much. The first couple of chapters teach you how to use way too many different PHP functions at the wrong times, when you don't need it at all.

I do like the comprehensiveness of the book, however, but the first couple chapters teach you way more functions than needed, and although it isn't hard, it is really boring and useless and time consuming.

This book should have been made as a comprehensive one with lots of PHP/MySQL coverage, but only teaching the applicable functions when needed, instead of trying to teach them all (or a good amount of them in the PHP language) at the beginning, expecting the reader to absorb everything even though he doesn't need it.

A pretty good book, but should be revised.

While flipping through this book for the first time I said "Oh My God!" no less than 10 times. That's how great this book is. It features the code for a functional shopping cart, message board, search engine, etc. Included on the CD is all the code and Linux and Win distributions of MySQL and PHP4 which is helpful if you still use a 56K modem. All the code and discussions are clear and easy to follow. My favorite part is a small example on dynamically creating/editing rich text files on the fly, which I am using as the basis for a project at work to create RTF Microsoft Word like documents through a web based interface. This book is simply the best, hands down.

I finally found a book that teaches you what you need to know and not what this other book writers know. I've been trying to learn PHP and MySql on my own and this book is putting me in the right track. It also throws a little Apache server on the side. Like any book, you will not find al the answers but if you are out to learn this book will not disappoint you.

This is an excellent book. Well, that's not much of a review, so let me explain what makes it so excellent.

I was not a programmer when I read it, but I can now confidently code fairly interesting things. I had an objective in mind, but I didn't know how to create it. Now I do, so I saved a few thousand dollars on hiring someone else.

I knew what object-oriented programming was, but didn't know what power it hid inside. Now I can harness the power of PEAR and phpclasses.org. Accessor functions was quite an eye opener for me. Please don't laugh :-).

I had a faint understanding of C, but this book introduces you to the concepts gradually and smoothly. Before you know it, you start thinking like a C programmer. Yet the beauty of PHP is that you don't have to worry about memory allocations, variable definitions (although something like Options Explicit would be welcome), or variable types.

If you are an absolute beginner to programming and databases, you will probably be a little lost along the way. Just read it a few times and it will start to make sense, I promise.

As for me, I was an IT person who had a mission to do. At first I wrote a simple application using Dreamweaver MX, which is the absolute best software to use for this purpose, and ran out of built in options to do what I wanted to do. The next logical thing was to read an appropriate book. I've spent a few hours choosing, and finally settled on this one as most promising to teach me exactly what I needed to know. Corporate electronic libraries have their perks.

The book progresses smoothly to gently introduce the reader to the main string operations functions, variables, variable operations, classes, functions, and then it goes in-depth on specific integration issues of php, mySQL, and specific applications that are commonly necessary.

You will learn sessions, error handling, how to implement secure transactions and so on. Believe me, you can build an application that you can charge thousands for after reading this. I've done just that as a result because I no longer had to hire a contractor to get my work implemented exactly as it was specified in my design documents.

If you have a real world problem, you need real world solutions, not the "Hello world!" examples. This book is exactly what you want to read. I've read well over 300 computer books in general, and this one is really one of the very best I've ever read.

If you are a smart person who was given a mission impossible to implement in PHP with mySQL, this book will get you to at least intermediate level fast.

Enjoy your trip,

Leonid

i got promoted in work. i knew nothing about PHP and had to learn fast.

this book totally brought me up to speed and saved me from a lot of stress.

i normally hate computer books as they are too dry or have too many errors. not this book, it really is very good.

if you are new to PHP i highly recommend this book.

I am a mechanical engineer. I bought this book because I am programming my web site using PHP and MySQL.

It has that you want to learn about PHP. I am not an expert, however I have learned a lot with this book so I am very happy.

If you like to build a commercial web site starting from zero, that is the best option that you have.

It is practical, easy to understand, examples are nice and the whole content is magnific.

I can recommend it if you like to program a real and functional commercial site.

FIVE STARS !!! ++++++++++++++++

I'll just say what I like about this book. It is easy to understand how things work from following examples. Some authors know the information but their writing style is horrible, that is not the case here. The book is broken down into sections/chapters in a logical way. It is concise but at the same time explain things sufficiently.

As I was reading this book further, I found a very serious contradiction that I thought I should share with the readers:
Page 144: "PHP does not support function overloading..."
Page 161: "PHP5 now supports function overloading..."

P144 should either say that prior to v5 it didn't support function overloading or just not mention it at all. People tend to make notes or just memorize things as they read and sometimes skip pages. This book claims to cover PHP5 so errors like these should never make it into final print.

I bought the first edition of this book several years ago and it has been my bible ever since. It makes everything amazingly easy to learn. I didn't even have to sit down and do a read-through. I just skimmed it to start out, sat down in front of the 'puter, and flipped through the book to figure out how to code each part of my first PHP-MySQL site. It was almost too easy. I have created about a dozen database driven sites since, and I always pull the book out for a quick refresher before I start coding. I wish there were books this great for learning all web technologies.

When I first got a job in the web development business I had no idea what I was getting into and, like many people out there, I was simply the most qualified person in the company. After 2 years of programming primarily with DHTML and XML I realized, painfully, that the knowledge I had just wasn't cutting it and began looking for alternatives. Thankfully, the server I had been operating on was running PHP and I was able to immediately begin testing scripts that I was learning through the internet. But learning through online tutorials wasn't enough.

A friend of mine who was getting out of the web development business gave PHP and MySQL Web Development to me and, after reading the first chapter, I fell in love. The great thing about this book is its multitude of examples. Spread throughout each chapter are sections of fully articulated scripts meaning that when I need to do something likeset up an array I can just flip over to the arrays chapter and take a look at the example and read the descriptions. Another great thing is that the explanations are focused on what something can do instead of on how it does what it does, a plus for a beginner.

All in all great book. The only reason I gave it only 4 stars is that it is a bit dated making it not as relevant today as it was when I first began programming with it.

Even something like PHP Developer's Cookbook is much better. This uses three words for every one required, almost like it's trying to pad the book out to make it look as if it's worth more.

The best choice is probably Programming PHP by Lerdorf and Tatroe - much more concise, and much more authoritative.

I'm taking my copy of this book back for a refund!

I am a complete programming novice (but experienced web designer) and this book is getting me up to speed on dynamic web development with PHP/MySQL. It gives you enough of the programming basics without any fluff! It also gives real world examples and not just lists of functions and reference material. This should be your first book if you want to learn this great open source way to database driven scripted sites. A full-on recommendation!

The book provides a fairly comprehensive coverage of the topics. I am particularly impressed with its coverage of programming syntax and semantics before delving into rigorous applications. The inclusion of the source code for all the examples on the accompanying CD will aid the reader in developing profiency in a short time.

The book is ideal for users of the Windows Operating System. It would be more complete if it would also address the interests of readers proficient in the LINUX (UNIX) operating system.

This book is worth every penny. I bought it after buying many other PHP and MySQL books. You are exposed to the code right away. The book will have you programming fairly quickly, doing real world stuff, and progressing fast. They express the language exactly the right way, and is well laid out. This book is made a diamond in the rough because they make the language seem so easy, and never let it get boring; they keep it interesting.
A huge plus is also that they tell you in the appendix, which they reference in Chapter 1, how to setup a web server (Apache) on Unix and Windows, get MySQL and PHP installed and running with the server and Apache, and cover every detail so that a newbe can understand it line by line. They explain all the options to fill out while setup of everything, which versions to use, and if something needs something in a config. file, they tell you where to find it and exactly what and where to insert code.
They also make everything visually scannable so that you can use it as a reference as well, or if you understand the details but are just looking for the syntax for something, etc.
Overall, this book is not only the best you can get, but probably as best as a guide can be written. My words cannot complement it enough. I am an electronics guy, very much like some previous post, but this book helps me understand the software very well. This book maximizes the reader's success. Enough said.

These people know how to write concisely and very clearly. Their explanations were ordered in a manner which allowed me to learn the most content the quickest. Right now I'm on page 255 of 864 and they still have my attention. Because of this book I want to do more PHP and MySQL programming than I wanted to before.

Specifically their explanations were not over-filled with emotional cracks and fillibusters like many other books I've read on Web Design (note that Web Design and Development are different things). At the outset of reading this book I had very little programming experience (took a college course in C++ about 3 years ago) and a I had worked on 2 or 3 mid-sized (10 to 20 tables) MS Access databases. This book went at exactly the right pace for my experience level.

Thanks Welling and Thomson!!!

Before reading this book I had an abundance of programming experience in C/C++ but none with HTML or programming a dynamic website. This book allowed me to quickly realize that there is not much difference between traditional programming and server-side web programming. True, one has to know a little something about html to present input and output, start a session, keep track of session and form variables, and interact with a database, but aside from this the programming is much the same: variables, loops, control statements, functions, and objects. And may be the strength of this book is that Welling's and Thomson's presentation makes this very clear. The presentation is no more difficult than it needs to be to get a web application up and running, whether it is a simple on-line survey, or an industrial strength e-commerce site. I was almost alarmed at how easy it seemed to zip through the chapters, or skim through later chapters finding the right tidbits of helpful information.

I found the chapters on MySQL very good, although I did supplement them with Parts I and II "The Relational Model of Data" from Christopher Date's "Introduction to Database Systems", as I wanted to have a slightly more advanced perspective on SQL database querying and a better understanding of what comprises a database system.

Finally, I should note that a benefit of using MySQL and PHP is that both tools have very good online reference manuals that will answer questions about advanced syntax and use that is omitted from this book (although I must say that this book covers a significant amount of both manuals, and places them well within the context of actual website development).

I couldn't have asked for a better book.

Being a productive web developer, I am constantly buying new books and looking through information online to better myself and make my online applications better. This is the first book that I have run across which reads easily and doesn't bore you to death. It is VERY well written and covers information easily and with great examples to help you understand something when you need it. That was the greatest thing - EVERY time that you get to a point where you are about to scratch your head and think, "huh?!", you are given a more detailed explanation, graph, diagram, image, etc. The authors and the publisher did a great job with this book and I HIGHLY recommend it to anyone thinking about using PHP 4 and MySQL for web development. I cannot say enough good things about it.

I really looked around before buying a php/mysql book, and bought this one based on: Amazon reviews! I have to say, it was a great book! For someone who knows nothing about either, but wants to jump right in working on web sites with php and mysql, this is the perfect book! It's well organized, it�s easy to understand, and the examples are very useful and straightforward. I really recommend this book to anyone interested in php/mysql web development!

I always borrow computer books from library and buy some from bookstores. This book is one of few that really touched me and make me "love" it. I can't put it in my bookshelf, I must put in a touchable place on my working brench as I always like to refer from it.
Its structure is good, wordings are simple and straight forward, examples are clear and step by step. Before I read it, I know nothing from PHP and mySQL. After reading it, I have confidence and skill to develop any complicated web application as this book does not only make you know "what to do" but it also explains to you "why and how to do".
After reading some chapters of it, I started to eager to read all pages of this book. It is really a computer book that makes me so excited while keep on reading it and following it to do my coding. And I love its real application examples too, they gave me lot of ideas of how to make a real-life application. I promised myself I must write a review in Amazon.com to let others to know how good is this book. So I suggest if you really want to do some PHP web application, buy this book before it is out of stock. I tried to help my friend to get 1 in local bookstore but already failed.

I changed hosting companies and had to stop using ASP and MS Access for dynamic content. I immediately fell in love with PHP and had to get this book. It has helped me time and time again. In a few short weeks, I was running my site with PHP and MySQL. It was mostly thanks to this book. It even helped me set up an administration site where I can edit content and is password protected. Thank you authors, for a wonderful book. I'm sure I will be using for years to come.

This book was recommended to me by several people in a PHP web forum. I found it at a book store and bought it. At the time I didn't think it was that great. At the time I was just beginning PHP and didn't know much about it. If you are a beginner, I'd strongly recommend "Php Fast & Easy Web Development" by Julie C. Meloni. After you have read that book, I STRONGLY recommend getting this book! While "PHP Fast & Easy" will help you get started with PHP, this book will help you begin to fully understand how to program in PHP and develop complex PHP applications (like message boards and templating systems). So in short, while this book is probably not for absolute beginners, it is a must-buy for those with some PHP experience!

I found this book to only touch upon important subjects of MySQL and PHP. If you want a better explanation of PHP and MySQL download the free online manual for each of these. The examples they give you are not detailed and can be misleading and have you scratching your head why they don't work.

If you have absolutely no experience with PHP and want to jump into the the world of web development and potentially extend your skills to create real-world web applications, then PHP and this book are for you.

The book gives you a little of both world: PHP and MySQL. Teaching you the most popular functions of both PHP and MySQL, you should be able to write your own simple MySQL-driven PHP powered website or application in no time.

The book also dwell into simple real-world web applications written in PHP which you can build upon as you learn. These apps include: a web mail based service, a mailing list generator, a web forum, a content managing system and even a shopping cart system! All source and even the entire book is included within the accompanying CD-ROM disc.

This book alone is more than enough to get you started with PHP and MySQL programming. Of course, if you want to master or fine tune your skills in this field, I would suggest you continue your reading with: "PHP Functions", "Web Application Development with PHP 4.0", and "MySQL"; all published by New Rider.

This book is different from anything I read in past. Different approach than in most similar thematics books makes reading much faster and more interested. All problems described in this book (including quite complex web shops etc.) are solved clearly. There are no contemplations about PHP/MySQL theory... only practical examples are shown, and all the necessary things are easly introduced. Once more, really great book. I want to recommend it to all people interested in PHP/MySQL development, especially those with programming in other languages expierience.

The first thing that caught my attention was that this book had me programming a real-world script, that applied exactly to what I wanted to do, within the first chapter! The tutorial just got better from there. This is a good reference book as well but I wouldn't buy it for that purpose. It really is a tutorial and should be read front to back, as opposed to somewhere in between. In that capacity it is excelent.

I had about four months experience teaching myself PERL (a language similar to PHP) before I picked up this book. After only a few days with this book I was easily performing more complex tasks with PHP than I was ever able to do with PERL! Frankly if you're still doing web/database integration in PERL you're living in the Dark Ages.

While I agree with all the glowing reviews (I was doing object oriented code within a week thanks to this book!), I must qualify it by saying that the first edition of this book has lots of typos. Some are obvious (and glaring) some subtle (and annoying). A great book, yes, but hopefully the second edition will be better edited.

This is the best book covering this subject I've read. It's really, really well written by people who knows what use to be the most difficult parts. They must be teachers and experts - at the top of both lists! It gave me understanding of this subject and helped me a lot in my own teaching.

This book is great for teaching you how to use PHP and MySQL. The one thing I don't like are the examples; they contain formatting that really belongs in a CSS file. The effect is to make the examples hard to read because they are full of extraneous code, particularly in the case of table elements because inline styles don't cascade to their cells...

Given the excellence of this book, I feel this is a huge oversight. The examples should contain only code related to content, not formatting. In the next edition, please remove the inline styles, move them to a stylesheet, and show us how to use php to dynamically create stylesheets!

Well done, maybe 5 stars. Has all the intro and intermediate info you need. Includes some best practices and programming concepts which I didn't want, so perhaps tries to include too much. But I'm being too picky. This book has everything one needs to get going with this technology and is thoughtfully presented. definitely recommended.

This was first book for me to learn PHP and MySQL. I have known C,Java,Perl and Informix database earlier so it took me little effort to understand the syntax of PHP and MySQL. I was glad to know many things new including both are open source, highly demanding, flexible in terms of good parts of Java, C and Perl. Installation and starting work on was very easy.

This book gave me lots of pointers on how to work on things at project level rather than little snippets. Towards the end it really gets better.

... but i've gone through the php crash course (the first part of the book). I have a html/javascript/css background so I could understand and digest most of it. The only thing that turned me off was how it got into describing all exceptions/additions and various obscure details that only served to complicate my mind. You know when you're a beginner? you don't neccisarily know how to filter out the crap that doesn't have any immeadiate utility. Personally I learn from lots of practice and actually writing code over and over. There wasn't enough of that - maybe i need to get deeper into the book. Lynda.com is really great: they give you a bit of information, always followed by you actually writing or tring it out yourself.

I was catched by the hype "best book" and so on, so now I'm reading it, though i'm only on page 200, but still the book isn't so great. Sometimes I think I'd better read PHP online manual, but not the book (now I'm reading both), because authors sometimes misleadingly present information. For example with __set() and __get() methods in the class, authors claim that these methods are always implicitly invoked when setting the value, but PHP manual clearly states "These methods will only be triggered when your object or inherited object doesn't contain the member or method you're trying to access".
Chapter about objects is very weak, I wonder if I hadn't previous experience with Java, I guess I wouldn't understand at all what objects and classes are, what they do, how they do it and so on.
Overall I can't judge if the book is better or worse than other PHP books, this is my first on the subject, so I give it a 3 stars.
I wish Bruce Eckel would write a book on PHP :)

I picked this book up as a total PHP beginner and was creating useful applications quickly. The examples are excellent and walk you through processes step by step. Now that I know more about PHP from different sources I can see that there are some gaps in information in this book, but I'd definitely recommend it to beginners. It helps if you've already done a little scripting.

Just one thing: why is this edition more expensive than the new second edition???

This book should not have "MySQL" in the title because it has very little emphasis on database design and programming. I bought because I thought it would discuss both PHP and MySQL equally, but its database discussion is cursory. It doesn't even discuss normalization. So I was initially very disappointed with the book. But now that my expectations have been adjusted (and I have purchased other books that talk specifically about MySQL), I now appreciate the book for what it does offer.

The best part of this book is the advanced projects in the back. These are not just toys, but skeletons of real world systems. By adapting the examples in Chapters 24 and 25, I was able to build a very nice shopping cart with authentication for a real-world Web site.

One nit... The authors' programming style drives me NUTS. It's modular to the point of insanity. I know some people like this way of doing things, but to me it's spaghetti code. They split things into zillions of different functions in zillions of different files. Many of the functions are one-liners. So to figure out how something works, you have to hunt through file upon file to find the real code. I had to read the sample code with a GREP program handy so when I opened one file to see calls to five other functions, I could find the other functions and then the functions THEY call, etc., etc., etc. Why does anyone think this way of coding is clear?? But this is a style issue.

Another style nit... The spacing in the code is weird. Either there are no spaces at all (e.g. xxx&&yyy) or everything is spaced evenly with no grouping (e.g. type = text name = Foo). Either way, it's hard to read.

I found a few coding errors, but this is to be expected in a project so large. Except for the style issues, the code was mostly good.

Despite its drawbacks, on the whole I've found the book very useful--mainly for the example projects in the back. I apparently bought this book weeks before the second edition was released. ::sigh::

This book was hard to follow in places and the code included with the book didn't seem to work half the time. Trying the simple examples given on page 506 (Listing 24.4) I spend good part of an 8 hour work day trying all kinds of things to make that simple script to work, but to no avail. I eliminated the if statement, the only code in the example, and it worked. This experience and the haphazard presentation and confusing explanations of the examples that followed I gave up on using the code in this book and found alternative examples elsewhere.

On a positive note this book has a good introduction to SQL functions.

Almost everything I was hoping for based on the reviews here. The coverage of PHP and MySQL is very good. I rate the book 4 (not 5) starts because it seemed to jump from basic language and environment tutorials (best part of book) straight into advanced web applications that were beyond what I felt ready for based on the earlier material. I read Larry Ullman's PHP for the WWW, then returned to this text with much greater success.

Both this book and Ullman's suffer from the fact that their code is outdated based on fairly recent changes to standard PHP coding conventions (register globals = off as default PHP install).

Not the best for the beginner. Personally I hate it when incredibly advanced programmers write books. They use abbreviations for variables that I found hard to follow, tons of 'include' files, which if you aren't familar with programming is excellent real world practice, but, not the best way to do things when you're trying to learn and understand the language, or an example. This book has been used as an alternative reference when an example in my other books isn't exactly clear, as another perspective. Cutting corners with abreviations and include files is fine when you're doing a project for a client and time is of the essence, but not when you're trying to explain concepts to the learning masses!

I first picked up this book at the behest of my supervisors to expand the division's web design to new borders. Having never programmed beforehand, I was daunted to say the least. However, the book takes an easy, step-by-step approach to introduce even the clueless programmer to the language of PHP. On top of that, I often find myself referring back to it in my web design efforts. I'm still learning new things about PHP, but this book gave me a solid foundation from which to start and continues to help me to this day.

This book is amazing. I came to it with intermediate html skills and zero knowledge about perl, C or any other programming language. In a week I was able to write an entire php/mySQL based site, using complex database queries to organize and present information. I'm still awed at the site I was able to create. I did this with the information in the first 11 chapters -- I haven't even gotten to Chapters 12-30 yet.

The book had me confused in a few places, but with careful rereading I was able to puzzle everything out. The examples are very helpful and great starting places for your own code. This book combined with a little online research at the php.net forums is all anyone should need to create a complex database driven website.

I'm a newbe in PHP, and to tell you the truth this book took all the fear away that I had about PHP. I LOVE it! Trust me, if you need to learn PHP from the beginning, this is a great beginner book. I KNOW it was for me. It talks very detailed about PHP and how to program with it. It has a very good flavour of MySQL as well.

GREAT CHOICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ilir Kuqi
[URL]

Alias/Shortcut to mysql and mysqladmin in Windows XP

The following applies to Windows XP users (at least) who use cmd.exe for command line (Note not command.com, for that use autoexec.nt for nt users and check registry ParseAutoexec=1)

My OS is Windows XP Professional. The book and MySQL manual shows you how to alias mysql path in unix environment, but not in Windows. Here is how.... (two ways doing the same thing, the easier for novice the first)

I assume your MySQL is installed under C:\mysql. If not, replace C:\mysql in the following to your mysql directory.

Check you're logged in as administrator by clicking start button. Then

Method 1 (My WinXP Pro is Japanese Localized version so title translation may not match to that of English)
Start -> Control Panel -> System -> Advanced? or Setting? ->
Environment? (bottom left button) -> Under System Environment Variables? table, scroll down to find PATH variable, highlight it and click edit. Add ;c\mysql\bin at the end. restart your computer and check your work by launching cmd.exe and typing mysql (if mysql is run as service automatically); otherwise launch mysql by typing net start mysql

Method 2
Start -> Run -> (type) regedit
Go to the directory:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Session Manager\Environment

On the right window pane, find PATH registry.
Double left click it and add at the end
;c\mysql\bin
Click OK
Restart your computer
Launch cmd.exe (command prompt)
Lanch mysql by typing (if mysql is not started already; i.e. manual setting in Service)
net start mysql

Check if it works by typing
mysql -u (your userid) -p <---assumes mysql is at localhost if not add -h (your host).

Done.

Ok... my review so far now at Chapter9...

The book assumes your basic knowledge of HTML. Prior experience in programming is minimal, but sure it helps.

As a novice with no prior knowledge of PHP, MySQL, Apache....

Pros: things are coherant and explained in order. introduces a new term with definition mostly. Points out where to pay attention in code. I find the book gets to the point quickly.

Cons: Above annoyance for windows, typos, sometimes fails to explain definintions, or they appears later in chapter(s). For novice like me, set-up info in Appendix was not enough for proper installation. See installation instructions under MySQL, PHP, and Apache manuals for your OS.

Intended audience seem to be beginning to intermediate.

This book is very practical, it starts from ground zero for php and mysql. Then it goes all the way to web securities, session management api, shopping carts, email list manager and web forum. As a professional Java web developer, I think it is a very practical book for PHP and mySQL. The quality is similar to the Oreily Servlet book, but it covers a lot more complex web applications thant the Servlet book.
I used it to build serveral very convient real-world web utilites
for my websites. Highly recommand it.

I have been using / writing JavaScript for about 2 years. I am working now for a technical school that needs a bit of help with some of the day to day office apps. The cost of MS SQL 2000 EE or Oracle :( is a bit out of reach. I was asked to create a deluxe intranet with quit a few DB's and keep some kind of budget... A friend told me about PHP. Free, easy to learn, etc.. After purchasing 4 other books on the subject I bought this one.. OPENED ALL THE DOORS! That's about all I can say. If you are looking for what the title of the book says, you will get it! A couple of typo's and a few other small errors but the book delivers. Good luck with your scripting endeavors! Peace!

PHP and MySQL Web Development was my first PHP book. My previous experience with PHP was simple stuff like looking at and altering mailing scripts and news scripts from popular sites like Hotscripts.com.

After reading this book for at least 6 months now I can recommend this book with 5 stars, two thumbs up, and a pat on the back. What is also helpful is the book comes with a CD rom containing the example scripts layed out in the book. Very helpful if you don't understand what the book is getting at and you need some hands on experience.

For example, the Mailing List Manager script has helped me tenfold in setting up a bulletproof newsletter script. I use it for myself, clients, and friends who need a lean script with a MySQL backend and easy to maintain lists. Best of all, it is easy to use and update for people who know nothing about coding and site design.

So in final word, get this book. If you are a beginner or expert PHP developer, it is a helpful reference.

SAMS got it right with this book when realising that companies and web hosts are including PHP/MySQL combos all over the place. he.net has been doing it for years and as cgi-bins become less common and people want in-line code and dynamic sites, there needed to be the killer book on the duet that always ends up dominating: PHP & MySQL. Soon, O'Reilly is going to come out with one too but if its a good as their mSQL and MySQL book, don't bother and buy this one!

I started this book one day and got all wrapped up in it. I couldnt put it down. All I wanted to do is read. I recommend this book to anyone who needs to learn, or wants to learn PHP with mySQL intergration

this is a great book to use as a resource for php. it is complete and much better than others i have looked at.

I cracked open this book knowing only basic HTML. About halfway through it, I was a website developer. By the end of the book, I was a website professional with highly sought after skills.

This book is not only written well, but is written in a manner that kept my short-spanned attention all the way through with plenty of momentum. Possibly the only computer book I have ever read all the way through.

I am new to PHP and happy to that now I've finally found a book that 'teaches'! I've tried other books on PHP and even looked at web sites that tried to teach it with no success. This book does not leave you confused. If you need a book that starts at the beginning, this is the one.

I bought this book primarily because of the impressive reviews. After struggling with the book for months, I now feel that others' reviews of the book were too generous. First of all, the book needs to be better organized.
And the codes need to be thoroughly tested.
The content is lean, compared to the volume of the book. I tried several other PHP tutorial books, but I have not yet found one which met my expectations. This is just my two cents.

Excellent book. All their examples work and they describe the differences that can be encountered in different recent versions of PHP. Pretty much all you need is here, and the whole book comes on the CD so you can take it with you when you are travelling.

For beginners this book is very worthwhile. I bought 2 "PHP and MySQL" books from Amazon and I haven't even opened the other book. Whenever I need code examples or a reference this book provides me with the answers.

The included source code also offers alot of code examples.

Not a bad book. It covers a little more that the basics but doesn't get real deep, and for my needs that was good. I wanted to find several books I could give to my entry-level programmers that would provide them with an extra reference. All in all it was a good addition to our class library.

I had hoped this book would help me with my site, but much of the code DOES NOT WORK. At least with my setup of PHP 4.4, MySQL 4 and MS IIS. You can get all this information and more just by searching the internet. What a waste of money.

This is a great PHP, MySQL book. If you are new to PHP and MySQL but have experience in other programming or scripting language, this is the book for you.
It does not bore you with reference information that you can find online, it explains the basics and then provides a vast array of example code that helps you understand and develop your own code.
If you want to develop PHP/MySQL web applications I strongly recommend this book.

Just look at the cover of this book. It just looks like another classic.

The first two sections are light tutorials(but not stupid) on PHP and MySql. The last section is packed with real world examples that could be used as a reference.

It is a very productive book that will get you started in a couple of hours.

For those of you searching for good php books, your research stops here.

A great beginners book.

This book starts off in a detailed description of PHP coding and sends the reader into a project instantly. The first project is simple and useful, utilizing the basic PHP commands for storing and retrieving data. The source code in the book is awesome, it shows many examples of coding, most of which is used on many websites.
The few problems I have with the book are in the later chapters. I felt that while this book does teach the basics, when it jumps into the "advanced" section the authors really didnt explain the steps in enough detail for beginners.
The things I like about the book is that it covers Php sessions, working with the file system directly, Ftp uploads, user authorization, and it even shows you how to make your own email page using PHP.
MySql is lightly covered in the book; it does not go into "high" detail with MySql but it does cover the basic commands such as create database, use database, create table, insert commands, and some basic authentication processes.
In the appendix it also has Apache, MySql, Php tutorials to help you set up your own little webserver. Overall I would hand this book to anyone who wants to learn PHP & MySql the proper way.
-us3rX-

The more pages that a computer book has the less value it seems to have and this book is no exception. The authors try to cover too many topics and as a result almost nothing is covered adequately. I've had problems making sessions work properly and the chapter on sessions was of absolutely no help. You can find better information on the Internet. To be fair, I did get a couple of ideas from this book that I've used in my web design. The most positive thing that I can say is that I'm very grateful that I got the book from the library rather than buying it.

This book does not contain a complete information about php and mySQL, it's just talking about the e-commerce thing.

This is a GREAT book on PHP and MySQL. When I first bought this book, I didn't know the first thing about server side scripting or databases. Now I'm CEO of my own web based store. Everything I know came from this book. It's very easy to read, and it doesn't assume the reader already has prior programming knowledge. The thing that I like most about this book is the examples and accompanying source code CD. They are exactly the type of examples that you would need to start your own store online or just to understand the basic functionality the whole database application concept. Most of the code you can just cut and paste (with minor changes). Long story short, after going through this book and examples you will be WELL ON YOUR WAY to doing some great things with PHP and MySQL. IT IS A MUST HAVE!

Tired of writing boring static websites? Then PHP is your answer and "PHP and MySQL Web Development" is your book.

PHP is much more powerful than Javascript, faster than Perl, it's free unlike ColdFusion, and much easier to learn than JSP or ASP.

Everything you need to know about writing PHP/MySQL is in this great book. Very well written and very easy to understand. Whether you're new to programming in general or you're a seasoned pro....this book is for you.

If want to get a few more books (which I recommend) to compliment this book, I'd get a PHP reference book like "PHP Functions Essential Reference" from New Riders. I'd also get a book on MySQL, don't get "Core MySQL". I'd also pick up a book with a ton of PHP exmaples and projects like, "Instant PHP 4". And for the advanced PHPer, pick up "PHP 4 Multimedia" from Wrox Press.

I found this book to be very well put together. It starts out with a crash course that quickly moves you along the syntax of the language and opens your eyes to possible applications of the language at the same time. As the book progresses, what you learn becomes much more applicable to something you may want to develop. The book assumes, as it should if your picking up a book on PHP, that you are already familiar with HTML and have some programming background.

This book doesn't try to go through each PHP function and tell you what it is and it's prototype. Nor is it a first programming book that teaches you how to program with PHP as your first language. It doesn't, however, require you to know much about a xnix, Win32 or HTTP server. It does teaches you much of Ph P's functionality through a some well written applications that are very practical and probably end up using.

As far as MySQL goes, it teaches you what you need to know in order to use it with PHP. It doesn't teach database design, ER Diagramming or everything about SQL queries. It covers the basics and then some of MySQL and basic queries in a few chapters.

I found the examples to be very well explained. Each bit of code is gone through throughly. It takes you practically line by line of what is going on and what everything is used for. The hardest thing I had to do with this book is install PHP, MySQL and Apache. After that everything is good to go and you will be flying through the material.

I started out with two books, one dedicated to MySQL, and the other to MySQL/PHP development. Errors in the MySQL/PHP book led me to try this one, and frankly, I don't even need to look at the others anymore. From configuring MySQL and PHP on my Linux system, to writing useful scripts, this book carefully leads you through it all. I am developing a web-based patient database system for a non-profit organization, and this book doesn't waste my volunteered time. It has everything I want, at the necessary level of detail. I should mention I am no beginner with either database or web development. I wrote my first professional database application (for HP/UX) over 12 years ago, and I have been employed as an engineer for Netscape Communications for nearly 4 years now. So take it from me, if you want to get the details on MySQL and PHP, this book has my unreserved endorsement. You won't be disappointed.

As a beginner to PHP/MySQL (and web programming) this book has been a real treasure. It is clearly written and the examples have helped me enormously in using PHP/MySQL in real world solutions.

I have read this entire book. It's a good book, I would recommend to anyone who is interested in PHP and MySQL. Unfortunately, it looks a little bit think that may discourage you at first but it covers all what you need.

This book was great! I have many many thick books on the subject but this stands out. I learn well by scanning through practical projects and that's this book's strong point. I can't vouch for the PHP tutorials (I learned PHP earlier) but the MySQL interaction is great. I keep this right by the 'puter and use it all the time as reference!

I was looking for a book that covers both MySQL and PHP. First I was thinking of buying seperate books but since I don't like 99% of the PHP books out there, I went for this one. I made the right choice. It's like two very good books in one bundle. It discusses MySQL and PHP seperately at first but soon you'll be accessing your secure database through the internet. It covers complex web development but it's so well written en thorough that veryone can use it, from starter to novice to expert.

This book has a wealth of great information about PHP, MySQL, SQL, and web site backend design. It has some great PHP / MySQL example projects that will show you how to put what you've learned in the book to use in the real web development world. If you want to learn PHP / MySQL development you can't go wrong with this book.

This book, in conjunction with "Sam's Teach Yourself PHP4 In 24 Hours," taught me everything I know about PHP and MySQL. Without it, I wouldn't have been able to get my PHP-based website off the ground.

However, I feel that, if I hadn't also ordered "...PHP4 In 24 Hours," I would've felt pretty confused; this book is definitely best used by people who already have some basic knowledge of PHP.

I ordered this book because I a designer who wants to get more into the back-end of the web. I was worried that this book would be too 'advanced' for me, but at the same time I didn't want to order a 'beginner' book as I had taken 2 years of computer science in college before switching majors. I was relieved when I opened this book. It's a great title for those in my situation. I had a good idea of what SQL and PHP were all about, but I needed a basis of where to start. It has definately gotten me out of the gates and developing datasbase applications for the web.

This book covers php and mysql effectively. It covers each seperately then together in an example shopping cart application.

This book does a particularly good job of covering the mysql priviledge system.

This book is a good examples book. It's organized more like two books in one cover having a fairly discinctive set of PHP and MySQL sections. It tries to be all to everyone for both, and actually does a credible job of pulling this off.

With very little PHP experience, but a fair amount of other language experience (Java, VB, HTML), I learned a considerable amount of information from this book. I'm very glad I purchased it, although I wish the book had at least been read by someone before sending it to the press.

Many of the typos were glaring. Like: a word was supposed to be dotted-underlined to signify a foreign key (p. 184), or a table was referred to, but no table existed (sorry, can't find the specific referrence, but I know it was there).

Either way, if a second edition comes out with updates such as XML, WAP, etc. with some editing, buy it with confidence. Other than that, buy it with the understanding that problems exist but you will still definately benefit overall.

I am new to the world of PHP and MYSQL web applications development. I have to say that this book provides the necessary foundation to allow anyone to build a transaction worthy web site. I was very pleased with both the quality of the writing as well as the insightful examples. Will be on my software development bookshelf for quite some time.

PHP And MySQL Web Development teaches the reader to develop dynamic, secure e-commerce Web sites. The reader will learn to integrate and implement these technologies by following real-world examples and working sample projects. PHP And MySQL Web Development also covers related technologies needed to build a commercial Web site such as SSL, shopping carts, and payment systems. Intermediate - Advanced, 880pp.

This book has been a life saver. Although its a big book, it doesn't contain fluff like some its size. With a variety of sample code to use as a base you will be up and running your site in no time. The index is complete, too.

When I ordered this book (for work, but soon I'll have my own J) I didn't know what to expect, but I must say that I'm impressed.

I feel that it is a mix between "PHP Developers cookbook" and "Professional PHP Programming". On top of that you get a basic introduction to the general programming theories. That alone is very positive!! Many other books give you just a simple example or two and you have to put that in to a greater context yourself.

My hat off for this great book.

I find this book very easy to understand and follow. The code is well explained except in some cases. For example the Page Class in Listing 6.1 uses the function htmlentities() but this function was not defined anywhere so it is left up to the reader to guess its implementation. I find this very frustrating. Also in the section on regular expressions on page 126 it is said "Note that when a dot is used at the beginning or en of a character class, it loses its special wildcard meaning and becomes just a literal dot". But just below this sentence we find that the dot is escaped with a backslash when validating the email so a very frustrating contradiction. Also in the listing 19.1 when it gets the stock quote using a regular expression. This stock quote is retrieved from the second element of the array $quote as $quote[1]. Why not the first element of this array as $quote[0]? I'm confused here!. I haven't finished the book yet but I found these errors very frustrating. That's why I give this book 4 stars and not 5. I'll keep reading and hopefully I won't find more inconsistencies and contradictions.

Everything about this book is wonderful, it also includes an electronic version of the whole book in PDF format so you don't have to carry it with you if you don't want to. This book is definitely a very understandable book and it uses real-life examples of how to do certain projects. Excellent buy!

This is one of the best overall software books I have ever read. It is the best PHP and MySQL book I have read so far. The structure of the book, the sequence of the material, and the technical explanations are excellent. It is not overly descriptive of details yet it defines the complex subject material very well. I maintain accounts on 1and1.com and all of the code examples from the book that I have tried so far worked with no problem after I changed file names to .php5. I was able to get the web forum application and the user authentication application up and running within 2 days of getting the book. I have experience in C, C++, and assembly programming but no real web development stuff. Also, I had bought (and returned!) three other books on PHP and MySQL before getting to this one. I am definitley keeping this book. 5 stars all the way!

This is an easy to understand book that went over everything that I needed to know. I'm pretty hard on book reviews as if I have to know the language before I learn about it then the book was a waste of time. I've just given up on one more book that has that same failing. I started a job where I quickly needed to learn PHP and MySQL. Because of this book (and that PHP and MySQL aren't that difficult to understand), I was able to learn these technologies quickly enough to finish my project on time. Can't beat that.

It's easy to understand and shows you examples of how to actually create useful functions.

I have to say that PHP and MySQL Web Development by Welling is fantastic investment. It is organized perfectly from start- finish. This book will remain on my desk for a long time.

This book ranks amongst the best on the subject. I spent nearly three months reading every page and duplicating examples on the CD. The book is remarkable in the way it manages to avoid coding errors which plague many computer books. Actually, there is only a very small number of typographical errors.

The book is easy to understand, even though at times one gets the impression the description is concise. It is to be appreciated how the authors covered the subject in about 800 pages. The PHP and the MySQL manuals each exceed 1000 pages. At times I found it helpful to read an independent description on the the subject, even though the manuals often lack the clarity of the authors' book.

The command mode approach is covered in the beginning of the book, while most of us have abandoned it, and it was a minor effort with some of the examples. However, the examples work, unlike some reviewers suggested. One has to be careful about case sensitivity of variables, which may be problematic with Linux servers.

Chapter 24 was a challenge to follow, considering the large number of functions employed by the example. However, patience prevailed, and was able to get it working after appropriate changes in parameters, such as user, password, and database names. Having the right to use only one database does not help my case.

What can be confusing to a student is having different entities with the same name, such as database name, table name, and column name all being called user. While this book avoided such an issue, my specific selection of variable names presented a problem. Overall, I find it difficult to generate comments detracting from the excellent rating of this book.

It was a great benefit to have a pdf version of the book on my hard disk. I could locate specific subject matters a lot quicker than I could by turning pages.

Potentially the most perfectly formed book in existence, this weighty tome makes all my other geek books shiver with fright. They've been outclassed, they know, their time has come, for the mighty "PHP and MySQL" has made its way onto my shelf. Every chapter is more riveting than the last, I mean, "Gone with the wind" has nothing on this beauty. And those diagrams! They should be framed and hung in the best galleries in the world. Obviously the authors demonstrate a combined devastating intellect which should enable them to conquer bold new frontiers.

p.s. Hi Laura and Luke :-)

I have read several books on PHP and this is the best. It presents ideas clearly, and the authors have a good sense of what is appropriate in large web site design.

I had read Professional PHP Programming 1/e, which I liked for its clear layout of the PHP language, but I needed PHP 4. In the bookstore, PHP Black Book looked good, because it covered topics (sablotron) that others did not. However, Black Book was so poorly written that had I not known the basics of PHP, I would not have learned them there.

So I read this book. On PHP it is clear. It is the best explanation of PHP objects I have found. It's discussion of PHP software engineering is the best that I have found. It's case studies are the most complete that I have found.

As far as MySQL, it is okay. Not bad. Get Kofler's MySQL for a better reference to MySQL.

I'm usually a die-hard O'Reilly fan, but I think this book is great. It's very easy to read, and it covers so much more than PHP and MYSQL. It covers many of the things that you should be aware of when working on the web in ANY language.

This is a very good book and very helpful. I only have one disappointment about it. I found that it didn't walk you through making things from the ground up. Such an example is the Forum chapter. It takes an already made forum and talks about how it works. I personally enjoy working from scratch. Overall, though, this is a great book. It teaches PHP and MySql very very well!

Besides several factual errors in description of functions in PHP, the most annoying thing about this book is how it drifts off-topic. Ecommerce, Website Usability, and topics covered more thoroughly in dozens of other books find their way into some chapters of this book.

Perhaps because this book was written by two authors, instead of one, there is some inconsistency in use of language throughout the book. It could have used a good, thorough, professional edit for fluency before going to press.

Also, in my opinion, the coding conventions as outlined in the book present a poor example for readers to follow.

"Building Your Own Database-Driven Website Using PHP & MySQL" by Kevin Yank retains its top spot in my library when it comes to these two technologies. Too bad that book is only available directly through it's publisher (try doing a Google search for it).

I did be better of reading the manual. I spotted several mistakes and several low grade examples which i thought were very decently covered in the manual.Over and above all this, the inconsistent code styles totally put me off.The only saving grace were the case studies.It was definitely not worth the money i spent.