Beginning PHP and MySQL 5: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition (Beginning from Novice to Professional)

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[Updated for Second Edition]
A beginning PHP book, not a beginning programming book. The subtitle, 'From Novice to Professional', can be a tad misleading for the novice coder. A beginning programming book covers a lot of material that this book assumes the reader already understands. Many software books include a 'Who Is This Book For' section that offers some guidance on the suitable reader knowledge level, not this one.

That said, I found this book to be very helpful. The sections on installing and configuring Apache, PHP and MySQL certainly saved me many hours of reading the online documentation and tweaking of settings while setting up my local test bed. That, in itself, made me a very happy camper. The author goes on to cover the various aspects from the basics of the PHP language and class libraries to topics like Authentication, Security, Session Handlers and eMail functionality that help anyone new to PHP setup some fairly sophisticated site capabilities.

The second edition has been supplemented with an added 200 pages, including a new section on PEAR (PHP Extension and Application Repository). This is a wealth of prewritten classes and packages that can be used to add even more sophisticated functionality to the novice's web development toolbox. The author demonstrates several of the more prominent packages.

The second edition has greatly beefed up with additional coverage of MySQL 5, including chapters on stored procedures, triggers and the PHP mysqli extension (all missed in the first edition). Most of the examples offered are clean and general enough to be useful templates for the reader's tailoring.

My suggestion for novices to PHP is read through chapter 9, then skip to the various sections that solve specific problems being faced or are of particular interest, including installing and configuring your local test bed.

Bottom line, the first edition was a good book for intermediate to veteran programmers looking for a quick tutorial on PHP (circa version 5.0); the second edition is even better. Novice programmers should ensure that they have a full understanding of the basics of programming (and OOP) before attempting it. I would now use this book to teach a class on PHP.
P-)

I'm not new to programming or web programming, but I was new to PHP. This book is much better as a reference than an intro to PHP, however, even there it has its limitations.

I bought this book, read the first 5 chapters (130 pages), and then stopped reading it because I was learning too slowly (ie, reading too many pages and picking up too little usability). As an introductory text, I would rather this book moved at a greater breadth but less depth -- it goes through dozens of specific functions, making it feel like a dictionary. There is also little attention brought to the functions you will be using soon over the ones you will not use for awhile yet. In that sense, it was very frustrating to spend a lot of time reading several chapters and still not feeling like I was getting anywhere or able to use much of the power of PHP.

In my frustration, I decided to revisit w3schools . com, and I found their tutorial immensely useful as an introduction to both PHP and MySQL (I needed both and I needed them quickly). That choice allowed me to start writing some PHP code within an hour and start working with databases quickly as well (nothing is mentioned about MySQL until Chapter 24 of this book).

So now, instead of use this PHP/MySQL book as a learning tool, I use it as a reference. The index isn't ideal*, so it still isn't a great reference, and the MySQL layout has not been helpful. I will be buying some PHP cookbooks to get a better feel for the capabilities of PHP and how to use its functions properly, and I will report back in this review after I find a better reference to recommend over this one (hopefully by mid-January).
*The index is HUGE, but I still have a difficult time finding things I need since I look for a lay-word over the word that is listed. If I already knew the word that is listed in the index, I may not even need to look in the index.

This book was written for new programmers that want a programming introduction to PHP and was not written for web programmers new to PHP. Although I program, I want features of a web programming book when I buy a web programming book.

What I consider a feature of a (good) web programming book: Chapters are split into a quick intro to the most commonly used fuctions of the chapter's topic (5-10 pages) and a longer part for use as a reference (15-20 pages). The book's format has good eye catching sections so readers do not waste time finding what is important if we just want to skim things so we can get into doing some web programming quickly. Commonly used functions are not buried in a bunch of uncommonly used functions.

I reach for this book when I want to get up to speed on something about PHP 5 quickly. With it, I can start coding and seeing results right away. The book covers a range of topics, the practicality of which can be best appreciated when you are faced with a real life project. For example, pp. 660-665 in Chapter 27, "Practical Database Queries", covers creating paged output (that is, spreading query results across several web pages) and listing page numbers which was just the thing I wanted to learn last night. My wife's database needs that sort of output. You can download Gilmore's example code and quickly start using it and then applying the lessons learned to build your own code.

This book is geared to people who want to get their hands on real code, wring the juice from it, make mistakes with it, learn all they can from it, and then tap out fresh code that does the same things with a little more oomph. Such people do not like long, dreary tracts of reading before being able participate in the elusive action. It is a good learning format because the only useful way to learn programming is to dive right in and do it. The book is a blend of brief discussion and quick code snippets with the expected results shown right away. This is a very good way to learn programming.

The section on SOAP, starting on page 450, makes me realize I had better experiment with this interesting technology. I'd certainly like to be able to find the temperature for a given postal code -- and other things of greater interest. Chapters 12, "PHP Authentication", 14, "Networking With PHP", and 15, "PHP and LDAP", look into core internet services that every programmer should know how to exploit, but too often don't. For example I've learned how to authenticate a user with LDAP.

The author, W. Jason Gilmore, is cheerful and most helpful in his responses to reader inquiries. He responded quickly to my questions and I am impressed with his ability to courteously point me in the right direction.

Be sure to download Gilmore's example code. There are 30 chapters worth of programming stuffed into that zip file.

The book has a few rough edges. The most obvious is that some sentences are a little wordy. That's all right, you can move on to the next paragraphs, and will soon be trying out a new example. I wish Jason had discussed MySQL 4.1 and the mysqli interface, especially since there are other books around that cover MySQL 4.0.x. Perhaps if he had added another chapter to cover that? We can always look forward to a second edition.

This book should be near every serious programmer's desk. You, dear reader, will reach for it a surprising amount of the time.

I really don't get the high praise for this book; other than the fact that most of the reviewers have programming experience already. I really think that book is way overated and, despite the claims of the title, is not suited for the beginner or the novice.

This book includes example code snipets about the use of individual functions, but does not have larger projects or exercices demonstrating how to bring things together.

Once I realized this, I thought, "well at least I can use it as a reference." And it does succeed at this to some extent. However, even in this capacity it seems a little shollow. Further, one gets the impression that it is basically a rewording of the existing documentation that is already available with PHP and MySQL.

To give just one example of all the above... Chapter 2 talks about configuration options in the php.ini file - PHP basics aren't even covered until Chapter3. Anyhow, let me open randomly to one of the excepts from the book and compare it to the .ini file:
-----------
register_long_arrays(On, Off)
Scope: PHP_INI_SYSTEM; Default value: off
This directive determines whether to continue registering the various input arrays (ENVIRONMENT, GET, POST, COOKIE, SYSTEM) using the deprecated syntax, such as HTTP_*_VARS. Disabling this directive is recommended for performance reasons.

-----------
And a cut and paste from the .ini:

Whether or not to register the old-style input arrays, HTTP_GET_VARS and friends. If you're not using them, it's recommended to turn them off,for performance reasons.
register_long_arrays = On

-----------

Again, at this pointt in the book (Chap2) a beginner/novice is still coming to grips with PHP basics (Chap3), let alone Arrays (Chap 5). Even after which, this is cryptic at best. How is this remotely geared towards either the 'beginner' or the 'novice'?! I could go on and on with examples from all parts of the book.

The sections on MySQL and the integration between it and PHP is thick, but lite. I consider this book mainly a rehash of the vendor documentation and lacking in real tutorials that are often crutial for novices to learn new skills. And, again, i think that the the book is completely mistitled.

Normally, I really like the Apress books; however, in this case I am benefiting much more from Wrox and Sams.

I might have given it a 3... but so many others scored it to high - even those who remarked on some of the same things.

-My 2 cents

I have been learning PHP/MySQL so I can program a web-based application that I am working on. I have read through a number of PHP/MySQL books and their sample codes and found this book to be the best by far. This book is great if you know even just the basics of HTML. If you want to learn how to create a MySQL database and use PHP to integrate your database with your web site then this is the one book to own. The author also covers helpful topics such as object oriented programming, SMARTY, function classes and other key sub-topics that help make a programmer's life much easier. I have compared the solutions in this book to others and have found this book to have far superior code. In fact, I am customizing code directly from the companion web site right after reading the book. Here's an example of how much more is in this book than in others: Most other books show you how to display on your web page a list of records pulled from your MySQL database using PHP. While most other books provide little additional detail from there, this book goes on to show you exactly how to add clickable links to each record line, break the list of records into multiple pages and put clickable page numbers at the bottom of each page that link to the pages. The bottom line is that the author helps you create all the cool stuff you see on other web sites that you wish you had on yours.

I am always skeptical when a book claims to be able to take someone from novice level to professional or even to serve the needs of both the novice and professional. If it is written for the novice then it is too basic for the professional. If it is written for the professional then it is too technical for the novice. "Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL: From Novice to Professional" is one of the very few books that lives up to its claim.

It is written in a highly readable style and organized in such a way that the professional can easily skip over the basic stuff and get right to what they need. Yet the novice can work through the book and soon become quite proficient. Areas covered in the PHP section of the book include installing and configuring PHP5, using variables, flow control, arrays, advanced OOP, error handling, expressions, forms, authentication, networking, and LDAP. Areas covered in the MySQL section include installation and configuration, table structures, and database queries.

For such a large book it contains almost no filler information. Every page contains useful information, the examples are appropriate and detailed, and descriptions are clear and useful. Author W. Jason Gilmore has a rare and wonderful talent for taking the complex and describing it in a simple, easy to understand manner so that anyone at any level can understand how to do it.

"Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL: From Novice to Professional" is a book you will want to have if you currently work with PHP or plan to in the near future. It is not only highly recommended but is the best book I've seen on PHP and I will be clearing some space off my book shelf for it since it easily replaces three or four of my favorite ones. I will have to note that the section on MySQL does not cover that subject anywhere nearly as well as the book covers PHP. Buy the book, read it, and keep it for the PHP section. For MySQL try "The Definitive Guide to MySQL, Second Edition" also from Apress.

PHP books often claim to be applicable to an absolute beginner to the professional, yet many fail to live up to this claim, except for this book. The word "beginner" doesn't mean someone who has no knowledge of html, or no knowledge of programming in general, but rather someone who knows a bit of html and maybe basic or c++ and would like to venture into the online programming world. So if you at least know that, then this book will be on your level.

What sets this book apart from the rest is a few things. First, the examples are short and to the point. There aren't pages and pages of code, where only a select portion of it is explained. Rather, Jason introduces a function and then provides a small example to explain it. Also, Jason is very good in his examples of sticking to only things he has taught you; which means you won't find yet-to-be explained functions in his code.

The second thing that sets this book apart from the rest is how Jason introduces new PHP internal Functions and other commands. There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of internal Functions and concepts in PHP and MySQL, but only a handful are used often. So every PHP/MySQL author has to determine where to draw the line at what things to discuss, and what to leave out. I've read many other PHP books and their focus is generally too broad, leaving many important functions out of their books. Not so with Jason's book. Reading through his book sometimes feels like you're reading though a PHP/MySQL manual because there are so many introduced functions and keywords, but after reading about each you instantly see how important each is. So in a nutshell, Jason introduces many more important functions than other authors, while not discussing things that you'll rarely ever use.

The third thing that sets this book above the rest is his in-depth coverage of optional/required modifiers for each function along with the various return values. For example, this is how Jason introduces filetype:

filetype()
string filetype (string filename)

Jason then explains the various return values possible like block, char, dir, etc etc. So, after you've read about a function or keyword, you come away feeling like you completely understand it. Many other PHP books will introduce a function or keyword and maybe describe a few features regarding it so when you walk away, you might wonder if it does anything else...

The fourth thing setting this book apart from the rest is Jason's explanation of Superglobals like $_GET, $_POST, etc. Many other PHP books don't even cover this! And those that do, just give a cursory overview of it. But these tools are so essential to PHP functionality that they really need to be given a proper explanation for a "beginner" learning PHP. And, only Jason's book gives that proper explanation.

Many more reasons set this book apart from others, that I could be here all day explaining them. His explanation of Object-Oriented PHP is excellent. He has chapters devoted to Regular Expressions and Working with the File and Operating System, things other books don't even cover. He discuses Authentication using PHP, something that almost anyone using PHP uses yet many PHP books don't even discuss. There are numerous other reasons why I really love this book, but I'll leave them to the reader to discover.

Though in the spirit of a good review, I do have some issues with this book. First, there are some chapters which I don't need to use, and probably never will: LDAP stuff, SOAP, SQLite, and some other stuff. This is a PHP and MySQL book, so I wish he would have ditched those chapters and discussed something that more users of PHP and MySQL can relate to.

Oh, and I should have mentioned this earlier but I just remembered it. Many, MANY, PHP books out there have an incredible amount of errors in them. In those books you'll find tons of errors in the examples, in the actual text, and in other places. But after reading all 600 pages of Jason's book, I really have to hand it to the editors. While I found an error here or there, they were few and far between. After finishing reading it, I knew that this was professionally written. Not a bunch of pages slapped together over the weekend. This is a professionally written book.

And one more compliment I can give is the way Jason talks in his book. He doesn't "talk to talk" or use fancy words in long sentances which have no practical value. In quite a few PHP books, I would get really confused after reading a paragraph or two and all it contained was words (no code)! PHP books aren't meant to contain technical writing nor feel like you're reading a section of the US Tax Code. Jason does a really good job of being direct and concise in making his points, and he's really easy to understand.

As said in previous reviews, this book is NOT for those that have little/no knowlege in programming. I have had an introductory class in C++, and I understood much of what is in the book minus the object-oriented stuff. The book would be an excellent guide for those coming from PHP 4 and wanting to learn new features, as well as those experienced in at least one object oriented programming language.

Anyway, on to the actual book. The book has very little overlap in chapters, making it an extremely useful reference tool. It is not a very good book to straight up learn PHP, but rather a method to your madness. By this I mean that it is more useful to read the introduction and start fiddling in PHP then referring to the book to learn new things rather than reading the book and expecting to be able to write some useful code. Although skimming the book is always good to keep the various functions of the language in the back of your mind so you know what you can do, this will probably impact you very little. There is simply too much information to memorize.

So, here are the pros and cons:

PROS
-Excellent reference
-Very thorough
-Does not meddle in basic computer programming practices/terms
-If book were memorized, you really would be a professional in
PHP with a good base for other languages

CONS
-Does not meddle in basic computer programming practices/terms
-Has very few extended examples, mostly small scripts to do
something trivial
-Spends about 1/5 on concept, 4/5 on syntax and functions

I can summarize this review in nine words. If you want to learn PHP, buy this book. But that wouldn't be much of a review now would it. Jason Gilmore starts this book the way most beginner's books start; with some history. But hold on tight because it doesn't take long before your hands start getting dirty.

After the brief history the book jumps right into installing and configuration then blasts right into PHP basic; syntax, tags, data types. Then it's not long before you are writing functions, using arrays, and then one of the most updated features of PHP 5, OOP. The book keeps moving right along into advanced features like error handling, regular expressions, and networking. And just when you think you have learned it all and you couldn't possibly think of anything else you could do with PHP, the book throws MySQL into the mix. By the end of this book you should have no problems writing PHP and MySQL enabled web pages and applications.

This book is a perfect mix of what someone new to PHP needs to know as well as providing advanced material and a reference once you have a grasp of the basics. So to summarize, if you want to learn PHP, buy this book.

Maybe beginners with PHP 5.0, but you definately need some prior PHP scripting experience for this book to be useful.

Gilmore does not have any real life examples for you to try and build your knowledge on in this book. Only a couple of lines are for each different sub-topic. None of them are connected to previous lessons. Some of the "examples" is not complete code. Just how that particular function or command would look on a single line. Very poor for a beginners guide.

I would have liked to see the book walk me through building some applications then tie them all together at the end before moving on to MySQL.

I recommed PHP & MySQL Programming (3rd Edition) PRIOR to reading this book.

After you can write your own simple PHP applications should you then move on to this book.

This book shouldn't be advertised as "from novice to professional", since it start assuming that you have pretty complex knowledge of C++, HTML, etc. The book doesn't even have an ordered structure: when you are in the first chapters, it start using functions that will be explained later, just as if you should know them before.

Sometimes very complex, other times it just seems like a big appendix of functions descriptions instead as a guide to use them in real program environment.

After reading the whole book, and having it at sight, I tried to create a simple program and it was just impossible, because I learned useless and too complex functions but I couldn't make the simplest program without looking for help at php forums.

It may be a good option for not-novice, but if you're looking for a novice book, DON'T buy this book.

I just got done putting all of my other PHP developer books on the shelf. The author does an excellent job of providing rich explanations, relevant coding examples, and insight to a broad range of topics that all PHP5 developers will use. Don't get me wrong, there is no fluff in this book, its all PHP and MySQL muscle.

I'm constantly drawn back to advanced topics such as XML, LDAP, web services, SOAP, OOP in PHP5, advanced MySQL, and secure programming in PHP. Key concepts are amazingly well presented and easy to understand. This resource has already made a positive impact on how my applications are developed.

Not to take away from the beginning developer, there are chapters for warming up to PHP and MySQL. Within no time you'll be writing PHP code and have at your fingertips an excellent resource for building advanced PHP and MySQL web applications.

A+++++++ for the author.

If you plan to learn php from this book, i suggest you start looking for another, this is just a dictionary about all terminolgy and commands regards php, but with no excercices!!! well.. there are a few lazy excercises. Its only a description of the methods i mean.. if you are reading about the function echo() you will read something like. "ok, you should use echo in this way "echo "this book sucks", echo is for show you some info on screen, or if you are reading about loops, like for.. "ok. for is for looping! like 1 to 10".. that's it! now you are an php expert!!!.. if there was a posibility to rate this as -5 i would.

This book is geared for three types of readers I believe (a rarity among books). First are people who have no experience in programming or web development whatsoever, the second are people who have worked in other languages whether be on the desktop or the web, the third type are people who already have some basic PHP and/or MYSQL experience and want to further their knowledge into intermediate topics. How can a book accommodate so many types of readers? Well, being slightly over 800 pages helps and also this book is very well written and organized and focuses on all the important topics.

It's basically split into three parts (even though it does not say it specifically). The first part comprises of basic PHP skills (installing, syntax basics, functions, OOP and regular expressions), the second part are intermediate to advanced topics (PEAR, authentication, networking, web services, SQLite and PDO) and the third part covers the basics and some intermediate topics of MYSQL (installing, data types, MYSQL and mysqli extensions, stored procedures, triggers, views and transactions).

The book basically covers everything you need to know about PHP and MYSQL for most of your needs. Unless your going to be writing large, enterprise applications on a daily basis (most of us will not be), it really is the only book you should need.

If you're a novice, don't be scared of the size of the book or how many topics it covers. The author assumes no prior knowledge and starts you from the very beginning with easy to understand examples that step you through everything you need to get going. It covers the latest version of PHP (version 5.1) which includes PDO (PHP Data Objects) which provides a data abstraction layer to help connect to other database other than MYSQL (DB2, SQL Server, ORACLE, etc.) , and built-in functions for database commands.

This is a book I highly recommend and should be in your library if you want to learn PHP and MYSQL effectively.

Hi,

When I read a few pages of this book at my local bookstore, I was impressed. The author is eloquent and candid, the code was legible and easy to follow, and the price was reasonable. It all was good until I started to notice that Mr. Gilmore was giving such a trivial examples that I really can't find much use for them. The book's subtitle "From Novice To Professional" is a blatant exageration. As a programmer, I could tell Mr. Gilmore did not address any advanced subject with any emphasis whatsoever.
One thing that bugged me quite a bit is the fact that I found at least 3 hypothetical outputs that were wrong with respect to what the code sample should have produced (all in the first 4 chapters). To me, that's unacceptable. When writing code, one has to think in layers and keep in mind the behavior of pretty much all of the routines and values of variables at any given time. If you are told by the author that function x(foo) sorts foo in ascending order but the output is in descending order then what gives? should you use that function to sort ascending- or descending-wise?
The coverage of simple programming principles is laughable (id est what's a queue and a stack, loops, time complexity, etc) or right out non-existant.
It's a good book for BEGINNERS (in the most literal sense of the word), but pretty much of no use for intermediates or advanced users.

I have several PHP books and if I had to choose one..this would be it.

Every PHP book is going to assume a certain amount of prior knowledge from its reader. If it assumes the reader is completely new then it probably won't be as deep.

Gilmore's book does assume some knowledge, but not a huge amount, and still takes you into the more extensive features of PHP. Most people new to PHP will often receive the advice to go to PHP.net. While that's not bad advice, new PHP programmers usually find it more help as a reference guide instead of a learning tool. I personally find it assumes more knowledge than this book.

Specifically, Gilmore's book has a good emphasis on secure PHP programming throughout (and a chapter specifically about it). When exposing the workings of a function or code snippet, he'll often show how the code could be misused and what the remedy is. Many times it is downright frightening what a nefarious individual can do if secure programming techniques aren't employed. This book opened my eyes to potential problems and, better yet, their solutions.

The writing style and organization are excellent. It's what you'd expect from a programmer and he doesn't let you down. For example, in the Arrays chapter there will be subheadings that sort the array functions by use -- such as "Sorting Arrays", "Determining Array Size and Uniqueness", "Transversing Arrays", etc. The examples are practical and useful. They don't introduce techniques or functions that he hasn't shown yet.

The book also has a very nice coding style. It's understandable, clean and concise. It doesn't rely on outside classes or libraries. I have another PHP book that unfortunately relies on using PEAR in a lot of examples-which detracts from its quality.

There is also a helpful section on PHP's configuration directives. It lists in an orderly fashion the configuration options, what they mean, the default values and the scope (how they can be changed). Whether you're programming on a local or remote server, it's helpful to know what these options are, their default and how they can be changed.

There is also an excellent exposition of PHP's new object model. There are two chapters on OOP and it seems quite comprehensive (haven't quite finished them yet).

The support from the author is fantastic. I had a question on one section and the author quickly (within a couple hours)and cheerfully answered my question. He also encouraged me to send him any other questions I have.

Overall, I'd highly recommend this book to anyone interested in PHP programming. If you're a complete beginner I'd also recommend "PHP-your visual blueprint for creating open source, server-side content" in ADDITION (not instead of) Gilmore's book. The PHP visual blueprint book is a little out of date on a few sections (there will be a new version pretty soon) and nowhere near as deep but it could be helpful for someone having problems on the basics. Good luck everyone.

This book was an excellent introduction to PHP 5. Coming from a J2EE background, Gilmore's precise and detailed explanations helped me understand what PHP 5 had to offer, engineer to engineer. Gilmore's book assumes that you're intelligent, and that you're interested in the details. He then explains those details in depths. All in all, an excellent book.

First off, this book is completely useless to you if you have do not have adequate OOP programming background. It jumps around different topics and does not really explain why things are arranged a certain way. This book pretty much assumes you have knowledge of either C, C#, Java techniques - which makes PHP extremely easy to understand. If HTML is all you have under your belt, this is probably a terrible book to buy.

Coming from an adequate background, this book introduces plenty of useful features of PHP and offers a good guide for reference and parameters. Since the book is titled PHP and MySQL, it is expected that the reader should know basic SQL syntax to understand how PHP works with a database.

Overall, this is a good starter book on a very broad topic and it has gotten me started on writing my own scripts.

This is as it states for the Novice to the Professional and that is completely true.
If you are new to PHP or if you know PHP well this book is for you. Great for beginners
and a reference for the professional to turn to again and again.
The foundation of the web is simple database back ends and interactive web page front ends.
MySQL is an Internet standard back end database and it's ease of use combined with the power of PHP
make the 2 a great combination to construct web databases easily and powerfully.
Gilmore guides the reader step by step from installation to basic functions, and finally to practical uses
for PHP and MySQL.
But wait a minute, Gilmore adds two more things. He sneaks small chapters in the middle of his book on
SqlLite and PDO. For those thinking that MySQL is a bit too much for their small project then turn to SqLite.
Gilmore explains how to install and use SqLite quickly. If you are a programmer and are familuar with using
Microsoft's ADO for database connections, then you can turn to PDO (PHP Dataobjects). PDO provides the
power and simplicity to connect to various databases that you may have at your disposal.
One of the great sections in the book is Gilmore's explanation of how to do Object Orientated Programing
in PHP. Starting with PHP 5 you can harness the power of PHP to deal with you program objectively. Object
Orientated Programming is mentally the way to go as you can plan, organize, and assemble your code logically.
Other chapters of interest include how to effectively use Arrays, Authentication, File Uploads, PHP and LDAP,
Secure PHP, Securing MySQL, Practical Database Queries, and Importing and Exporting data.

If you do any work with PHP at all, be sure to check out this book. It will pay for itself in full.

I think everyone knows that computer language books usually lean towards one of two extremes; either 1) the author cuts-and-pastes his doctoral thesis into Adobe, leaving everyone more confused than if they hadn't read the book at all, or 2) the book is apparently geared towards six-year-olds and the elderly, leaving you with 3 useful pages out of 800. (Also the books that somehow do both by covering basic variables on page 3, and polymorphing classes on page 5).

This book really does a good job of finding the middle ground. The content is extremely useful and it's well organized. The transitions between sections have a gentle slope, so you can read the book front-to-back, or pick out specific chapters without feeling lost (This will definitely be a reference book for me.) It's also written with personality, making it (I'm embarrassed to admit) decent late-night reading for the technically obsessed.

When I was researching the book for myself, I noticed some people commented that this book was too advanced to be called a beginner book. I agree with that, but only if you don't have any previous experience with programming in general. If this is your first time writing code, you should look for a general programming book first (but THEN get this one), but if you have any kind of programming experience, this book is a no-brainer!

I'm a seasoned ASP developer looking to move away from M$ to something a little more solid...PHP! So...I definitely needed a book that would serve as a good introduction to both PHP and MySQL. Unfortunately this book does not serve that purpose. If you're looking for a 'beginners' book on PHP and have no prior PHP experience...look elsewhere!

Granted, to an existing PHP user this book will likely serve its purpose as a decent reference book. It definitely covers alot of ground. But it's the terminology that messed me up. Word of advice to the author...don't assume that your readers already know something but don't treat them like idiots either. For example, in the chapter for installing and configuring PHP, I found that the explanations for many of the PHP settings to be confusing at best. For this section, I would have given a good solid introduction to the basics of installing PHP then given more detailed configuration later once the reader has gotten their feet wet. Too much info early on with terms that I don't understand. So...I jumped ahead to Chapter 3...the basics! Again, the terminology stumped me. When I got to the Output section and saw: boolean print(argument) What the hell is 'boolean' have to do with this? No explanation. Then theres this: void echo(string) Umm...ok...void...that's the opposite of boolean right? It wasn't until I saw the Tip box later on till I got even a brief explanation as to the context of these terms. The final draw for me was the explanations for printf() commands...or the lack of it. I found the authors explanations to be lacking.

So..to sum up, if you're an existing PHP developer then this may be the book for you. If you're a beginner...find another book! Nuff said.

I am a casual PHP programmer (now that I have the book), but have programmed for the last 20 years. This is an excellent book for the experience programmer because it is organized in such a way that you can skip directly to the topic that you need help with. For example, I wanted to write a simple file upload page, I skipped directly to the "Handling File Uploads" chapter. You don't even need to go to the table of contents because the intuitive chapter names are in the upper right corner of the page so you can simply fan through the book to find your chapter.

And... There is nothing like being able to ask a question of the author and get a reply within a couple of hours. That is what happened to me tonight. I was too lazy to find in the book where to get the sample code, so I wrote Jason and got a reply back within two hours.

If you are looking for a comprehensive text on PHP and do NOT have a programming background, you may want to start somewhere other than this volume. It is definitely NOT geared toward the rank amateur. I got this book to learn PHP and more specifically to help me integrate forms better into my Web pages. Sadly, 'Chapter 11: Forms and Navigational Clues' has only about ten pages of PHP as it relates to forms and half of that is semi-useful scripting examples. I'm sure this book is a fantastic reference if you are already familiar with programming but if you are a PHP novice, like I am, this book is not where you want to start.

I bought this book on recommendation. I have a background in programming, and I just needed a book to cement together all the concepts I had picked up in developing PHP apps. Less then 2 chapters in the errors became so frequent in the code that the author no longer holds my confidence. Its hard to be confident of his explanation if it lacks the care to make sure its correct.

The writing and explanations, though following a clear format, are at times wildly inconstant in explaining the parts of various functions. Do not recommend.

I've been a PHP programmer for a few years now. I picked up this book (1) to find a good book for people new to PHP and (2) to introducte me to some of the new features of PHP 5. In my opinion, this book does both very well. While it is good to approach this book with some knowledge of programming concepts already under your belt, the book does serve as a good starter guide to PHP. It starts with the basics and builds from there. The overview of the material is excellent, and the chapters on MySQL cover the MySQL features most likely to be useful to PHP programmers.

The biggest fault I have with this book are numerous errors in the writing. The editors should have given the book one more good read-through. The code itself tends to be good, it's the explanations that sometimes don't match the code. The errors tend to be pretty minor and the alert reader won't have any problem realizing the mistake. Still, my wife has gotten tired of my exclamations of, "Here's another one!"

On the whole a great book that does what it claims to do. I have already recommended this book to others and will continue to do so.

Although the title says 'From Novice to Professional' be aware that you won't go from novice to *expert* with this book. It will, however, bring you to a decent functional level (hence professional). Also, it is true that the book assumes a basic understanding of programming. So if you're new to programming, get an 'Intro to Programming' book before or follow some general programming tutorials to bring you up to the basics.

This is a great introductory book to PHP that can as well serve as a reference. It covers many areas, not always in depth, but most times enough to give you some solid bases and get you to actually 'do stuff'. The good thing about this is that at least 95% percent of the stuff covered matter. What that means for you is that you are veered to the right choice of technologies and concepts from the beginning, ready to expand your knowledge in any of the areas.

The book assumes that you want to work with Apache (which you should ;) ) and explains how to set things up in both unix and windows environment. However, even with a book these installations seldom go without problems, so I would strongly recommend to search for a bundle installation like wampserver, xampp or any other that group the 3 applications (apache, mysql, php).

If you're strong headed like me and like to hurt yourself you can decide to go through the pain and install each individually. The tradeoff is that you have a better understanding of the overall environment. My best advice if you choose this route is to RTFM (read the 'fine' manuals). My second best advice is Google.

Chapter 1 and 2 will serve you better as reference later on in your journey as you become profecient enough to actually care about tweaking your environment for features and performance.

Once all is installed and working, the book really starts with chapter 3. There's an extensive coverage of basic language features such as variables, arrays, functions, scope, comments, escapes, selection and repetition structures, etc.

You will gain some solid notions of intermediate level stuff with chapters on file handling, file uploads, session handling, data insertion and retrieval, authentication.

Some chapters bring you to a productive level with more advanced features like object oriented programming, templating (which with OOP offer good precursors to the concepts behind the MVC when you will learn about design patterns in more advanced texts), web services, regular expressions, error handling.

MySQL as well is covered to a workable level, I particularly liked that Jason Gilmore walks you through the creation of a database class to encapsulate your connection and access needs. It well illustrates some of the practical application of OO Programming in the real world. Most serious developers use similar classes in their day to day development.

There are other chapters in the book that may be of interest to some (networking with php, ldap, SQLite).

This is probably not the last php book that you'll need, but it's a great first step to prep you for more advanced subjects. Overall for the beginner this is a great bang for the buck.

Prior to purchasing this book I had some web design experience, as well as some programming experience from years ago. Then recently I took a programming course based around Java, and in November successfully bid for a web project which I knew would need a database and some dynamic web pages. After a little research I decided that the PHP/MySQL combination would suit, and then I browsed Amazon for a suitable book to get me started.

I can honestly say that Jason Gilmore's "From Novice to Professional" book has been an excellent investment for me. The learning curve was nowhere near as steep as I was anticipating, and it got me from "novice to finished project" a month ahead of schedule. I'm not saying that I didn't have to source a certain amount of information elsewhere - mainly from web forums - but Jason's book was the mainstay of my reference material. Not only that, but during testing of the project I ran in to one major problem that I could not find the answer to anywhere. One email to Jason and he was good enough to reply within twenty minutes with a working solution. This turned out to be a significant added value to my investment in the book.

I found the book to be well written and the sample code to amply demonstrate the points being made. Unlike some people who seem to only look for "real world" examples I would much rather see concise code that directly demonstrates the concepts under consideration than a "real world" example that may never bear any relevance to what I want to achieve. This book gives me such concise examples. In addition it does also provide a number of real world examples that have also proved useful. For example I duplicated the MySQL database class quite early on in my project and that has definitely saved me considerable subsequent work and given me a more robust site.

The structure of the book is both good for reading in sequence and for dipping back into as reference material. Although I have now had to source more advanced material to move on to the next level, I still keep this book to hand and refer back to it regularly.

I thoroughly recommend this book.

I have well over 25 books on computer programming languages, from C, Perl, Python, Java. I have to give credit to Mr. Gilmore, this book was excellently written, everything is precise and to the point with code snippets to show. Definately enough in this book to get you a web server up and running with apache, PHP, and MySql loaded, and the ability to create a webpage using them all. A+

Gilmore's book is essentially 2 books in 1. First comes an in depth coverage of php 5, including OOP. The book takes a no nonsense approach and a lot of material is covered, but if you really want to learn, this book is clear as a bell. Gilmore provides plenty of code samples and if you have a question you can send him an email and he actually responds. Wow, it's like having your own private teacher.

Second part of the book deals with mySQL and its integration with php. It builds a firm foundation with the basics but then moves on to cover advanced concepts such as transactional capabilities using InnoDB. If you want to be a PHP/MySQL professional this book is for you.
Get it!!

If you are new to PHP, DO NOT buy this book. I can't believe all the good reviews here. There are no practical examples, and very little useful information. It is, at best, a reference manual. If you're new to PHP, check out David Powers' books.

I am a semi-experienced programmer, majoring in CS and currently in my third year. I needed to buy a book to learn PHP for a job and originally went for O'Reilley's _Learning PHP and MySQL_. I quickly realized that was a bad choice, however, because it was way too simple and short and didn't really cover SQL at all. Even as a reference book it just did not suffice compared to Gilmore's _PHP5 and MySQL_ which I borrowed from a friend. PHP and MySQL is covered in great depth, and a thorough index makes this nearly-exhaustive text a great reference book.

**This is likely not a book for someone who has never programmed before** as it uses typical programming language terminology without previous definition. Still, abundant examples and side notes allows anyone with reasonable programming experience to breeze through the book. Reading this cover-to-cover would definitely not be the correct approach, but skimming over the chapters and getting acquainted with the PHP language is something this book makes easy to do when you can simply slow down and go over the examples when you feel you need to, or quickly reach the next section thanks to good organization and text formatting.

If you are looking for a reference book for PHP and MySQL just short of a bible, this is definitely for you. But if you are a complete novice to programming, you would probably be better off coming back to this later or buying it on the side for once you have more experience.

Had a few bumps with the installation, actuall contacted the author through email and he took the time to help and point me in the right direction. A very knowledgable man and wrote an excellent book!! Would recommend this to anyone looking to get started in PHP!

The author covers every aspects of PHP programming. From the basic syntax (loops, conditions, arrays, string) to more complex topics as security, networking, authentication. He also covers a lot of stuff on mysql database server including its installation with apache, on windows and Linux. There is also sections on server configuration of PHP, Apache, MySQL. The author, obviously, has very good experience in web programming and the tips are unvaluable.

I cannot forget also the "after-sale-service". I had a question regarding "authentication" and I had an answer about an hour after. He says at the beginning of the book that he likes to answer to emails and I can say that it is true!

I'm very picky about what books I will read to learn a new language, and even more so about writing a review. This book was a pleasant surprise.

The book is a good read. Gilmore has a quick style that gets to the points he makes without burdening the reader with a lot of nonsense. His wit and sense of humor shows through the text on occasions which lightens-up the material.

The book is well structured and has plenty of good examples that experienced programmers will understand immediately and novices will find as good stepping stones on the path of learning.

Enjoy.

PHP and MySql are two very successful open source packages. Here, Gilmore tries to explain both within the covers of one book. If you just need to learn one, you can certainly use this book for it. The book cleaves neatly into three parts. One on PHP. One on MySQL. And the last part on combining the two packages.

Gilmore chose this mixture to, in essence, use one as a foil for the other. The key chapters are at the end, where he demonstrates how to integrate the two packages. In doing so, you can see in a non-trivial fashion, how to more fully use the expressive power of both. If you like, consider the MySql as an important use case for PHP, and vice versa.

Granted, this makes for longer reading and assimilation of the details. But the tradeoff is that potentially, Gilmore offers you a positive sum game over learning each package in isolation.

Despite the title, this book is not for the novice. Even the introductory first 100 pages or so assume that you are above a novice level. The examples lead to more questions (for me, the novice) than they answer.

Having said that, this book has a tremendous amount of information in it and, as other reviews mention, it will work well as a reference. Now, I hope to find a true beginning PHP book to provide the basis to use this book!

First off let me address a common review, that the book is too advanced for beginners. Plain and simple, it is not beginning programming, it's beginning PHP and MySQL. To even know what these applications are, you should have some programming background anyhow.

That said, even if you don't have any prior experience, the book does a great job of introducing you to the key concepts, and is flooded with examples, the best way to learn.

This book has become my programming bible, but it maintains a great balance. It has everything you could ever wish to look up later (and you will), but still follows a nice rhetoric and flow for someone looking for a tutorial-esque book. Some of the examples he wrote are key frameworks in my website! I actually used his book as my main source to build my website from the ground up. Even if it doesn't have something, it arms you with enough knowledge to know the right questions to ask. Which leads me to the greatest part of all... he backs his product!

I battled a bug for over 4 months that I was unable to solve from searching anywhere on the Internet. It's then I remembered that he listed his E-Mail address in the book and challenged readers to contact him if they needed help! Not expecting a response, I was shocked when he speedily replied that day, and solved my problem finally to boot!

To sum up: Not necessarily for beginners period, great for programmers beginning PHP and MySQL, the only book you should have to buy, and a very supportive author.

I never got around to finishing this book because halfway through it I noticed I had not even written a single line of code.The author does not propose any excercises for you to try out what your learned through the book.All he does is list all the functions available in PHP but no examples on how to use them.
I can see this book being useful as a reference after you have programmed PHP for a while, but for beginners that want to get started in PHP for the very firt time I would not recommend it.

I'm a semi-newbie when it comes to PHP. I've done some simple PHP previously, and for a project at work I needed to ramp up my knowledge of using PHP together with MySQL. Due to the ratings for this book, I ordered it.

It's fairly well written, but the code snippets themselves occasionally have syntax errors. This extends to the source code that you can download from their site. I can understand syntax or other errors in a book, but I can't forgive errors in a file that is easy to update online. In fact, it got so bad that I had to look online through some tutorials to get the syntax correct for my project, defeating the purpose of me purchasing this book.

While providing a solid understanding (If somewhat terse at times) of the workings and background of both software packages, error checking needs to come into play.

I was a beginer at PHP and MySql when I bought this book. Now I feel comfortable doing alot of coding for personal and business use. The book explains things in a consice step by step manner with tons of real world examples. The author is very easy to read and the book reads like he is having a conversation with you. This is a great book to have in your collection from beginner to expert. NICE JOB Jason!!!

It was a decent book. I've been reading this in my spare time during my High School classes... It offers an easy to read guide to beginning PHP. I must admit that there were some parts that were difficult to follow (mostly around the introduction to object oriented programming, as this was my first leap into OOP), but other than that, it was an easy read. Some of the examples in the book have typos, which added to my confusion. I was able to fumble the way through the typos thanks to php.net's online reference. All in all, this book offers a good introduction to the language, but it is by no means a desktop reference that you would want to consult after you get the basics of the language down. I believe that honor goes to php.net.

I read this book primarily to gain a better understanding of the new features available in PHP 5, and in many cases this book excelled in that aspect. Particularly, I felt the chapters on object-oriented programming were the most valuable. On the other hand, I was somewhat disappointed that the author didn't cover the new MySQLi extension for use with MySQL 4.1, as I felt that this was another prominent upgrade in PHP.

This book does cover some topics that many PHP authors tend to skip. Some examples of these include Templating with Smarty, LDAP, and RSS. If any of these topics interest you, or if you're looking for a solid reference on object-oriented programming in PHP 5, then I highly recommend this book. As an introduction to PHP, however, I'd have to say this isn't the book you're looking for. Part of the reason I make this statement is the order of the topics. For example, MySQL isn't even introduced until the end of the book, long after more advanced topics are covered. It seems to me that someone learning PHP should learn about basic database interaction long before they have any interest in advanced networking functions, or creating a SOAP server. Additionally, I would expect a "Beginning" book to contain more practical examples and sample projects (just my opinion).

Overall, I'll give this book a rating of 3 stars. While I enjoyed the authors tone and writing style in general, the content, order of topics, and misleading title left me a bit disappointed. I have had better luck with other Apress books.

This is a great reference book. It delves very deep into both PHP and MySQL. One thing I found lacking was some context. Practical examples so that I can see what I've learned being implemented in real world applications.

Other books that do not get so deep often include these types of exercises and I find them extremely helpful to gain a true understanding of the material.

In my opinion, if this book included excerises, case studies, etc.. it would be perfect.

I bought this book because I had a project that required me to set up a dynamic website driven by MySQL and PHP. Using what I learned in the book and a few free online tutorials I was able to finish the project 1 month early.

This book assumes some prior programming experience, so if you've never programmed getting an intro to programming book would be a good idea first. There are many examples of code in the book which cover many things you might like to do with a website driven by these two technologies. Not a terribly difficult read with lots of info.

I finally made it through my copy of Beginning PHP and MySQL 5, by programming guru W. Jason Gilmore. The technical editor was Matt Wade, founder of CodeWalkers, a great PHP and MySQL resource site. It is the Second Edition follow-up to PHP 5 and MySQL. Since I've already written a review of the First Edition, I will try to mainly focus on the changes to the second version of the book, which cover some of the newer features in each of the technologies.

At the initial time of printing for the first book, many PHP 5 features were only in the beta version, and MySQL 5 was still in alpha testing. Now, eighteen months later, they have solidified into what has become quite a formidable enterprise solution for server-side scripting and database storage.

There has been quite a bit of extra material covered this time around, to the tune of 177 additional pages. In fact, by comparison the new edition is noticeably heavier than its predecessor. The existing chapters have also been revised, with XHTML examples being given in most cases instead of HTML, as well as minor changes to some of the updated / deprecated syntax.

A total of seven new chapters have been added, further enriching what was already a great resource. One of the more interesting subjects covered is the new mysqli() extension. It is encapsulated into a class, allowing you to access a database more easily than the older, procedural method. It also offers an object oriented interface for handling transactions, adding code efficiency.

Aside from offering informative chapters, there are also several good tutorials, such as creating a mortgage calculator which will compute accumulated interest over time. Another cool one was a how-to on rendering a dynamic tabular calendar by using a PEAR package and less than 30 lines of actual code.

I could go on and on, but if you really want to dig into this powerful open-source combo, you're going to have to read the book for yourself. By the author's own admission, "this isn't a romance novel," but if you don't mind some heavy reading this could be right up your alley. Happy hypertext pre-processing!

[This review refers to the second edition.]
A beginning PHP book, not a beginning programming book. The subtitle, 'From Novice to Professional', can be a tad misleading for the novice coder. A beginning programming book covers a lot of material that this book assumes the reader already understands. Many software books include a 'Who Is This Book For' section that offers some guidance on the suitable reader knowledge level, not this one.

That said, I found this book to be very helpful. The sections on installing and configuring Apache, PHP and MySQL certainly saved me many hours of reading the online documentation and tweaking of settings while setting up my local test bed. That, in itself, made me a very happy camper. The author goes on to cover the various aspects from the basics of the PHP language and class libraries to topics like Authentication, Security, Session Handlers and eMail functionality that help anyone new to PHP setup some fairly sophisticated site capabilities.

The second edition has been supplemented with an added 200 pages, including a new section on PEAR (PHP Extension and Application Repository). This is a wealth of prewritten classes and packages that can be used to add even more sophisticated functionality to the novice's web development toolbox. The author demonstrates several of the more prominent packages.

The second edition has greatly beefed up with additional coverage of MySQL 5, including chapters on stored procedures, triggers and the PHP mysqli extension (all missed in the first edition). Most of the examples offered are clean and general enough to be useful templates for the reader's tailoring.

My suggestion for novices to PHP is read through chapter 9, then skip to the various sections that solve specific problems being faced or are of particular interest, including installing and configuring your local test bed.

Bottom line, the first edition was a good book for intermediate to veteran programmers looking for a quick tutorial on PHP (circa version 5.0); the second edition is even better. Novice programmers should ensure that they have a full understanding of the basics of programming (and OOP) before attempting it. I would now use this book to teach a class on PHP.
P-)

And that is about any topic. Usialy I have to go around and buy two or even three books to get all the information or understand everything about a topic. I had 3 for Visual Basic, 2 for C++ and 3 for Java. I am half way through Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL: From Novice to Professional and I never felt I was missing out by not buying something else. It contains everything I need to realy become proficient in PHP and MySQL.

Thank you Mr. Gilmore!

I recently finished reading this book, and have found it to be a comprehensive yet also user-friendly reference. It is rare to find this combination in a programming book, because the two are usually mutually exclusive. Based on my past experiences, how-to books are either very informative but too complicated for a beginner, or easy to understand but lacking in depth. Too often, those who are knowledgeable speak about a topic at a level too difficult for the layman to grasp.

This is not so with W.J. Gilmore. He is clearly an experienced programmer, in his thorough explanations of the intricacies of the language. What sets him and this book apart however, is the way he welcomes the beginner in his straightforward approach to the various topics. He covers the full spectrum of PHP5 / MySQL capabilities, and also elaborates on other closely related areas such as Apache, RSS, Smarty, and SQLite to name a few.

This book could very well be titled PHP / MySQL: And Everything Else Under the Sun. I bought both this and the companion text Essential PHP Tools, by David Sklar. Not to fault Sklar, but much of what is in his book is already covered in Gilmore's. Such topics include the Smarty templating engine, SOAP, and XML parsing.

I am a big adherent to the "So What" adage / principle. So, what does this mean for you, the end user, my fellow consumer and aspiring PHP5 programmer? It means that if you are looking for a volume which not only informs but also teaches, look no further. There are plenty of books out there that act as encyclopedias, but this one serves as both reference and guide.

If you are considering Gilmore's book amongst other options, purchase this one first and give it a read-through. If you still aren't satisfied, then look to other books to enhance your knowledge. My hunch is that as you progress in your understanding, you will find this book to be not only informative but also foundational to your programming skills.

I have a bunch of PHP books and I have to say I have not picked the others up since this one has arrived. What I like about this book is that the examples are in digestable chunks and clearly explained. I am not a programmer by any means, but with this book I am able to create usable web interfaces that help me automate my job.

The book is more a glossary of terms that are in the php manuals. I could not benefit from any effort (except on a couple of occasions where something is described in full) that could have been devoted to trying to translate theory into the things you really need to know when actually doing anything you want, such as a search form that contains several select lists that are linked and that you want to pass the selected values to a database to retrieve results etc. You are not going to find an answer for that at all.
Besides I am coming to pages such as 450 that contain php code which does not exist as function (as of 8th nov 08) , for example: session.use_cookies
If you go to the php website you will be told that that function does not exist.

"Sorry, but the function session.use_cookies is not in the online manual. Perhaps you misspelled.."

and it continues Perhaps you were looking for one of these:

session_set_cookie_params

I do believe that the author does know a lot of programming to expert level in many languages, but in this book I have not seen that knowledge translated into something that really helps me do my website. I have made my site by a time consuming consulting on practical pages and advices I have seen on the web and how other people have solved common things, like the one I have mentioned above.
So, I would welcome another book from the author that would take the time to think what we need to do for what, and put his great knowledge into useful tips. I dont mean to lend us intelligence, but by seeing it in praxis, then we can easily build upon.

Later Edit in April 2009:
This book deserves a 2 stars not 3. I can't edit the stars!! Really... if you don't have money and you want to learn PHP ... BUY ANOTHER BOOK! You have been warned. If you have money and want to learn PHP, just buy it and put in in your library. It looks awasome.

---------

Hello there,

I begin learning PHP in 2003. I havn't progressed much since then. I learned the basics of PHP from "PHP and MySQL Web Development" by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson. I know how to interact with the database, create sessions, I can even go furder if I'm interested and I read some tutorials over the internet, however I wanted to have a book that I can read in bed.

So I took this book based on reviews and because it also covers a bit of PHP6 All I wanted is to remind me on some stuff I read some time ago and learn some new things, tactics I could use.

So I started to read. I rememberd some old stuff about Arrays, Strings. I still can't get OOP but I havn't tried to much. Now I will defenetly use PEAR because the examples in the book weare helpful, HOWEVER...

As other people say, this book is more as a reference book. I didn't got so much information. I'm on chapter 21. I will soon start to read about MySQL and I can't really say I have learned something. Yes, I know some things but still, this isn't good for a beginner.

The book "PHP and MySQL Web Development" starts MySQL in chapter 2. This means you start from the begining on actualy doing someting useful. Here you just read chapters after chapters but you don't actualy have good examples. Yes, you have examples and how to use some functions but no big examples.

I first got my disapointment when I was on SESSION HADLING chapter where I really wanted to see some COOKIE examples. All I found was some COOKIE FUNCTIONS and some explinations that I could have got from PHP Manual. From PHP Manual I could have even found some examples, here nothign. Then I found some simple details about $_SESSION. TO little covered in this important chapter.

Then I finally got it. All this book does it present to you some functions. Explain them. You see a small example and you move on.

No actualy practice! I really wanted a BIG BOOK from where I can learn more stuff.

This book is written for someone who is familiar with other programming languages and databases and now wants to use PHP and MySQL. It is not written for somebody completely new to programming. For example, if you came from Perl or ASP, and you wanted to know how arrays, loops, and objects in PHP, this book will cover that.

The topic coverage is broad but not deep. The book has a feel of "semi-reference" in that each topic stands on its own. This is not a cookbook or "learn by example" book. There is enough information to get you started, but if you have a complex/niche problem, this book will not help you. For more information, you will have to consult books that specialize on the topic you are interested.

I have one major gripe with this book. There is not any significant coverage of XML manipulation or XSL/XSLT aspects of PHP. When you look at the table of contents or index, there is no mention of XSL/XSLT and only a brief mention of XML (and RSS) in the Web Services chapter. For a book that covers a lot of subjects, this is a weak area.

This book does have a lot of information, making it a great reference book. However, after 10 chapters I still do not know how to use any of the information to "build dynamic, database-driven web sites..." as the subtitle states. If you're a beginning programmer, as I am, try to find a true beginner's book (wish I could give a recommendation).

I purchased this book because I needed to use PHP and MySQL for a project at work. I never had any exposure to either before reading this book. By using this book and the w3schools website I was able to successful build a meager database and have a fully functioning php front end. It was very pleasing to see the project come to fruition and I have this book to thank for that. I used it mainly as a reference book. For example, I knew exactly what I wanted to do so I would search this book for an example of that and adapt the code to my situation. I didn't use this book to "learn PHP." I think you need to have a project to do in order to best use this book.

it's thick really. And can't blame the accuracy as technology changes . There are errors i found , and couldn't resolve. If only he has a support forum , it'll be better . This book expects you to have some knowledge in PHP. And like some say, it's implementation to a website and turorial is little or near to zero.Should include more samples of cases. you have to figure out your own. it's more like a textbook than a self-learn book. It's good for reference. I suggest who is really new ,in PHP - look for other that is easier to read ,and more novice-like.This book should help in your advance to professional stage.

I haven't programmed in almost 10 years, but wanted to jump into PHP and MySQL generated web content. I was able to pick and chose throughout this book to bring myself up to speed and have a functional website in a matter of 2 weeks. I was easily able to adapt examples in the book to fit my needs.

This book was really worth the money. I will be referencing to it for a long time to come.

I recently purchased "Beginning PHP & MySQL: From Novice to Professional" to
help me in my summer project of expanding my knowledge of web design. As it
turns out, the book has been more than a help! It's practically all I've
needed.

First, let me say this book DOES NOT teach programming. So, if you are unfamiliar with general programming constructs and how they work, this book may not be for you.

This is my first book on PHP and MySQL. I have read many other books ranging from simple web development to game programming with OpenGL and C++. For anyone with some understanding of programming this is an excellent book. It is one of the easiest reads for a technical book that one can find.

The book is full of short examples. The book does not unnecessarily spend a long time on particular commands and gets straight to the point. For example, the chapter on arrays does not go over what an array is and how it operates, but discusses a huge plethora of array functions. This makes the book a great reference, as the chapters are independent and well organized. This also means the 913 pages are packed with a wealth of information; especially since, there is not an appendix.

The author is also very approachable, and he has responded to my e-mail. He also has a new site for the book that I recommend you visit before making your decision. [...]
This book is definitely a good choice if you are looking for a book to learn PHP and use it with the MySQL database.

It is a good book, but I was looking for a chapter were the author would developed a simple project (including the teachings of all the other chapters). For the next release, if the author includes more practical examples and -overall- a simple but comprehensive project, the book will deserve 5 stars.

Jason wrote this book with the idea in mind of the real developer. By covering subjects such as security and alternative methods where it is needed and recommended, true applications can be developed using PHP and MySQL.

After reading this book, I find that I have a lot of new knowledge. I already considered my knowledge level to be that of an intermediate, but I now consider myself an expert.

You should buy this book.

The book is very well written but it almost assumes that you have had some type of programming experience. Reading the book I had to refer back to other programming languages I have learned like Java and C++ that have similar syntax in order to fully understand the concepts that he was trying to get across. Most of the book is understandable, but certain areas of the book (for example when he covered the printf() function) are a little bit vague. Overall it's a pretty good book, if he ever comes out with a second edition I'm sure it'll be extremely popular.

Although I have a number of years experience as a programmer, I am very new to web programming, especially server-side scripting. Both my son and I are now learning PHP in order to expand our programming knowledge and to gain some web-automation experience. My son is the webmaster for the videa yearbook at his high school, and he was specifically interested in getting rid of some tedious web maintenance issues by converting at least a part of his site over to dynamic web pages using PHP.

I spent some time selecting a book on PHP to help us both in our ventures - always a tough choice, unless of course you have lots of money, and are willing to buy 10 books at random and then pick the best bits out of them all.

I read the reviews of this book here on Amazon, and based on the overall very positive response from other purchasers, I went ahead and picked up a copy.

One great pleasure I found with this book is that the writer takes the time to express himself in a very readable fashion, while still covering a lot of technical issues. I especially like the way the book is broken down into sections based on what you want to accomplish with PHP, rather than just being a linear list of its functions.

I have yet to deeply venture into the sections on integrating MySQL with PHP, but from the quick looks I have made at those chapters, they seem to be equally well written.

I highly recommend the book to anyone.

Sometimes when I read books to learn new languages I feel like I have to know the language before I even read the book. Not so with Gilmore's text. Gilmore gives the reader a real sense that a person is sitting there beside them teaching them how to code in php.

If you want to learn php and mysql then my opinion is that Gilmore's book is your best bet.

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading Jason's book. His extensive knowledge of PHP shines throughout.

Chapter 2 is really nice for those who want a complete discussion on installation and configuration of PHP 5.

He then spends a lot of time covering the basics of the language that provides a good grounding for a beginner to PHP.

Next, he walks one through the new object-oriented functionality of PHP 5. He discusses the important concepts of OOP (object oriented programming) and shows what PHP 5 supports and how it does as well as what it does not support.

His chapter on regular expressions is great! I, as a Perl programmer, enjoyed its exposition. His method is to discuss the different functions and then provide a nice example.

The traditional chapter on PHP and web forms is easy to follow. After this he has chapters on authentication and file uploads, chock full of ideas. He discusses session handling functions and then has some very interesting real-world examples.

Templating using Smarty was done well. The chapter started explaining what templating was and then moved on to where to obtain it and its installation. He gave a sufficient number of examples of presentational logic using Smarty.

He spends about 180 pages discussing the MySQL database. First he discusses its installation and configuration. He has a nice discussion on the different table structures. It is nice to see a good discussion on MySQL's privileges. I found his chapter on PHP and MySQL useful with examples of selection and data manipulation. For those not very familiar with databases, the chapters on indexes and transactions are well worth exploring.

I was thrilled to see a chapter of web services. PHP 5's SOAP extension is nicely explained. He has a good example of a soap server, client and the corresponding WSDL file. He also delves into NuSOAP, which has to be downloaded. He explains how easy NuSOAP makes it to work with SOAP. For example, the WSDL document is generated automatically.

Gilmore's use of examples throughout the book is excellent. I highly recommend this book to anyone who want to both learn PHP and discover all the additions with version 5.

I spent several hours in my local bookstore and selected this as the most readable and comprehensive of the selections on these subjects available.

I encountered a problem with the testing of the enviornment after having installed Apache and PHP. On a Sunday evening I sent off an e-mail to the author and had a response before I went to bed. I was amazed.

I am experienced mainframe person with little WEB development experience. This book is serving as a valuable tool to get me moving into the web environment.

I would like more examples but the book is quite lengthy as it is. Perhaps a book on developing a sample application in this envrionment would be useful to those of us trying to get started.

This book is great!
Altough its 1st edition and there are a couple(about 10) code
mistakes(In the whole 738 pages) - This book is the right one
for you if your'e already know PHP in the mid-expert way.
This book looks a bit like a refrence book only its alot better.

This book covers all of PHP5's newest including SQLite, Advanced OOP, New ERROR handle and much more!

Uri.

Well, I just got the book, and I am still on Chapter 3. I had some problems at the beginning, but a quick e-mail to the author fixed everything. It is very well explained, and the author was very helpfull when I got stuck. An awesome book.

I'm a sucker for a good price and I bought this book hoping that in the 1000+ pages I could start to learn PHP. I did - but I also quickly got frustrated and distracted by the author's complete refusal to explain ANYTHING with conciseness.

This is a reference book, not something you'd want to read cover to cover.

Boring examples, wordy discussions - the authors seems to have been more interested in boosting page count than anything else :(

Another bloated PHP book was Larry Ullman's Visual QuickPro. Are there any php tech authors who know how to write??

Beginning PHP and MySQL: From Novice to Professional, Third Edition by W. Jason Gilmore is a good resource to get you started on your way.

After the brief history the book jumps right into installing and configuration then right into PHP basic; syntax, tags, data types. Then it's not long before you are writing functions, then using arrays, and then one of the most updated features of PHP 5, OOP. The book keeps moving right along into advanced features like error handling, regular expressions, networking , how to use Smarty ,MVC and the Zend Framework. then the book begin explain MySQL . By the end of this book you should have no problems writing PHP and MySQL enabled web pages and applications.

This book is a perfect mix of what someone new to PHP needs to know as well as providing advanced material and a reference once you have a grasp of the basics. So to summarize, if you want to learn PHP, buy this book.

The following is the contents of the book:

* CHAPTER 1 Introducing PHP
* CHAPTER 2 Configuring Your Environment
* CHAPTER 3 PHP Basics
* CHAPTER 4 Functions
* CHAPTER 5 Arrays
* CHAPTER 6 Object-Oriented PHP
* CHAPTER 7 Advanced OOP Features
* CHAPTER 8 Error and Exception Handling
* CHAPTER 9 Strings and Regular Expressions
* CHAPTER 10 Working with the File and Operating System
* CHAPTER 11 PEAR
* CHAPTER 12 Date and Time
* CHAPTER 13 Forms
* CHAPTER 14 Authenticating Your Users
* CHAPTER 15 Handling File Uploads
* CHAPTER 16 Networking
* CHAPTER 17 PHP and LDAP
* CHAPTER 18 Session Handlers
* CHAPTER 19 Templating with Smarty
* CHAPTER 20 Web Services
* CHAPTER 21 Secure PHP Programming
* CHAPTER 22 SQLite
* CHAPTER 23 Building Web Sites for the World
* CHAPTER 24 MVC and the Zend Framework
* CHAPTER 25 Introducing MySQL
* CHAPTER 26 Installing and Configuring MySQL
* CHAPTER 27 The Many MySQL Clients
* CHAPTER 28 MySQL Storage Engines and Datatypes
* CHAPTER 29 Securing MySQL
* CHAPTER 30 Using PHP with MySQL
* CHAPTER 31 Introducing PDO
* CHAPTER 32 Stored Routines
* CHAPTER 33 MySQL Triggers
* CHAPTER 34 MySQL Views
* CHAPTER 35 Practical Database Queries
* CHAPTER 36 Indexes and Searching
* CHAPTER 37 Transactions
* CHAPTER 38 Importing and Exporting Data

I own several PHP/Mysql reference books, and this one is the most comprehensive of all of them. Just the right balance and written descriptions/explanations and practical applications/examples. I wouldn't necessarily say this book is for beginners, but anyone that's a novice to professional would love this book. I highly recommend the 3rd addition for any PHP/MySQL developer that is looking for a great reference.

I have recently bought this book and have to say it is execellent, it does help if you have a little prior knowledge as some new readers could find it a little difficult to understand. But if you have an interest in PHP and MySQL it is a great book to get your hands on. I highly recommend it.

I bought this book because I need a more advanced book on PHP/MySQL - specifically in the use of mysqli, PDO and stored procedures. I found this book to be quite lacking in these areas. I have the MySQL Stored Procedure Programming book by Oreilly and it covers these subjects in better detail but even it doesn't go as in-depth as I would like.

I think there is some good material in this book but it didn't satisfy my immediate need and for that I am disappointed.

Some sections of this book have been very helpful, while others seem to have been slapped together for "completeness" but without much thought or care. For example the section on session handling I thought was quite good. The section covering the newer object based MySQL interface was hard to understand and lacked enough information to do anything beyond the very basic example given. Then again most books on the shelves right now don't cover it at all.

I found numerous errors in the examples, but that seems to be standard fare for most rushed-to-print books of this type. A larger problem is that the text is often unclear, and the examples don't do a good job of helping. Also where there are multiple approaches given to a problem the examples seem to stick to one approach and other approaches, while mentioned, are not shown.

It's easy to accept these shortcomings as it seems to be the norm for this type of book, except that after spending some time looking through other books on the subject I did find one that does a much better job on all fronts. No surprise it's an O'Reilly release - "Web Database Applications with PHP and MySQL 2nd Edition."

As to whether I'd recommend this book...not as a sole source of information. It does have some good sections that are worth having access to, but trying to use it by itself to learn with and as a reference has been an exercise in frustration.

this guide speaks in laymens terms and teached using simple examples. I would recomend this book for grandmothers and professional web admins collections

I picked up about three different books on the subject, and this one was by far the best. It moved at a fairly rapid pace, but each example was explained fairly thoroughly. The past couple of years I haven't had much luck with computer books; some were either a little too slow (PHP Visual Blueprint-- but at least the examples worked) and/or extremely sloppy (Designing with Javascript from O'Reilly is a prime example-- demo files from the website either didn't work or were missing entirely-- and the errata page didn't even begin to address these problems) or presented haphazardly (Elizabeth Castro's Peachpit book on Perl). I was really glad to find this book when I did. I was about to give up on computers entirely and turn to some disreputable vocation like war profiteering.

This has been a great book for me. I've been using & tweaking PHP applications for a few years, and recently had occasion to build one. The fact that this book could also refresh my MySQL skills peaked my interest.
I was impressed with the nice examples, long enough to show the main idea, yet other reviewers are right, there is not much here in the way of fullout precanned applications.

I like that this book seems to be organized so that rather than just read it from cover to cover you can dive in and learn from any particular section. The examples can can be downloaded from the Apress site. At times, when printed examples left details out it would be nice if those details would be included in the down-loadable examples (.css files are used in the HTML_Table demos, but never shown or down-loadable).

After browsing the MySQL sections I was able to create and manipulate the db I wanted in no time.

This book covers lots of ground, I was impressed with the completeness of PHP topics, including things you might not expect, like Smarty templates and the Data abstraction of PDO.

Contrary to other reviews, this book is still not a complete PHP reference manual, it's not meant to be. But if you have this book and a link to a PHP reference website you'll be fine!

I have a background in Visual Basic which definitely helped. The Chapter about setting up the Linux server I just skipped over but the rest of the book has been very good so far. I would recommend this book to anyone who has some programming experience (any, really) and would like to get into web database programming.

It will also be valuable as a reference later on.

This is a very, very helpful book. I learned a lot of things. I usually used to read articles on the internet about PHP but this book has all they had PLUS more explanation and why things do. For instance, I only knew 3 error reporting codes and this book teached me 13! Nice stuff.

I bought this book to teach myself PHP in order to build a data driven intranet site for my company. Everything I needed to learn was in there, and the topics were clearly explained with plenty of examples. Terrific buy.

Being brand new to PHP, I found it very helpful to read through the primer this book offers on PHP basics to get my footing. From there, I have used the book as a reference to solve particular problems, such as setting up a module for uploading files from a client to my web server or using PHP to send emails from your site.

The book is very well written, clear and to the point, but with enough elaboration to keep you interested. Works well as either a reference or a read-through.

Recommended!

This book is excellent. The author's style is very readable and the examples of coding he provides are useful.

Don't expect to learn PHP from this book easily if you are not at least a reasonably capable programmer, but what you will be able to do - even if you are a complete novice - is to copy the examples and make them work - which let's face it is the way most of us learned to program - and that'll get you there in the end.

I haven't found a techie book as good as this since I first read Kernighan and Ritchie's book over 15 years ago.

Anyone who wants to learn PHP should use this book it will work for you, C coders will find it especially straightforward. Enjoy!

I've been programming with dozens of languages since 1974, but I was new to PHP. This book was exactly what I was looking for! I read the book cover-to-cover. Jason has the unique ability to introduce the subject completely without boring you to tears. He knows when to provide examples, and when to leave the reader to figure out the rest. This is an excellent book for programmers that have seen the patterns before and have experience with other languages. You will immediately "get" how to do things with PHP... and once you do, you may never go back to your "old" programming language.

In terms of explanation of the combination of PHP and MySQL, this book is definitely the best of what I could have my hand on so far. It is instrumental to all levels of readers, even to those who have faintest idea of what is computer programming, like me.

I sincerely urge Jason to continue his work in this area, but this time, I would hope that he would target more on practical applications and provide more visual assistance. I bet his next one will be a bestseller if he would!

Liked the book very much.
What I liked best about it was the simple and well-thought-out
explainations of some of the underlying technology that go
hand-in-hand with PHP such as web services and web templates.

Like all good authors Mr. Glimore goes a long way to demystify
the potential complexities of the technology and show us just
how easy it is to do something really useful in PHP.

I knew nuts about PHP and MySQL. At the bookshop, I was contemplating between this book and another one from the Bible series. Skimming through both books, I felt confortable with this book rather than the other one, and I never regreted my decision to buy it. The author gives all his instructions clearly and concisely, making me grasp the language at ease. Everything started from the basics and builds up right up to the insights of the programming language. This gives the reader a good understanding of the what and whys going through a reader's mind. I would say that this is the best programming book that I've owned! FIVE STARS for the book!

This is a great book, it covers a ton of material in total but does not totally cover anyone particular subject. I will not list all the chapters another reviewer did that already, but I have over 30 books on php and this one was on my wishlist here on amazon for a long time.

This book does have examples and they are working examples if you manually type them and follow along. The examples however are not long and do not go in depth or build upon previous examples, each example is just long enough to demonstrate the subject. This to me is better than the online php manuals, because it makes more sense. The manual uses generic variables and naming conventions, such as foo and bar and foobar, $a, $b, $c etc, which for a new programmer is confusing. This book uses real names and puts the material into a perspective that most people can better envision. Like examples about employees.

This is more of a reference. It even says in the introduction"novices and seasoned php and MySQL developers alike have something to gain from this book, as I've intentionally organized it in a hybrid format of both tutorial and reference",

So this is not a here is a a script from beggining to end starting with the basics and building, the book would have to be two volumes, it is over 2 inches this as it is. If you are looking for a follow through step by step, info then implementation and build up, David Powers books are the ones you really want, I love those books. But you really really should consider having this book for an easy reference, this will give you a more in depth way to review information in other books, or a second explanation, this is sort of like having a tutor.

Over 2 years ago I decided with no prior experience I was going to learn how to build websites. I started with a wysiwyg editor, learned it, and found out I needed to learn a language to process forms on the server side. That lead to my discovery of php, the most confusing programming language known to man. I say that becuase it has procedural and now OOP abilities, for example java is straight and very simple to learn, pure OOP. I am working on sites where procedural and OOP php are intermingled and it gets confusing. This book has been a huge help in figuring it all out.

One thing I learned after reading many books on php and mysql and just not getting it, was I needed to learn the basic programming concepts. So I did my research and found out what my local college was using for that. The book programming logic and design, by Joyce farrel(5th edition), there are 2 and introductory and a Comprehensive, I suggest the comprehensive, that is the one I got for just a little more $$, these books are not cheap, about $80, but the information is superior. She does not teach you a programming language she demonstrates the logic and how to design programms, how to use flowcharts, and suedocode. There are entire 50 page chapters on how arrays work, methods, fucntions all the stuff the php beggining books try to show you, not to say they fail at it, but it helps to have a book on nothing but that, then learn a programming language, like php. There is also a book that goes with it to help demonstrate the concepts with code java or vb, programs to accompany programming logic and design. I bought it and do not really recommend it, you could learn alot from it, but I feel it was written with too little example code for a begginer to grasp with out deep thought and many trials and errors. Just read Joyce farrels book along with David powers books and your set, along with some other books.

By the way, while David powers does walk you through he does tell you he is going to have you do something then undo it and do it better. This may frustrate some people because it takes time, but you really can't rush learning php as I am now learning it takes lots of time and practice, repetitious practice, until it is burned into your brain, then beginning php and Mysql is a very very valuable book for quick simply explained information.

All in all I have learned PHP takes patience, java is fairly simple, and structured much like php's oop, yet php's OOP is a devil in its own with its keywords, and other very special features.

The section on smarty is short, but clear cut once you figure out how to configure / use it, it is not a full explanation. If you want that look up smarty on amazon, there is only one in depth book. I pray someone will write another book about smarty soon.

What I really liked about this book and its author Jason Gilmore, is the book has his email address in it and he does actually email people back????? That is a first for me atleas.. I had a question about something and he emailed me back in I want to say within 24hours, I have never once had a response from any author, he also has a site for the book www.beginningphpandmysql.php

I only take the time to write a review this long because these are the ones I look for when purchasing any product, and the one where the guy listed the chapters is what made me finally fork out the money for this book, there are still many more on my wishlist here and I am very happy with my decision to purchase this book sooner than others. Furthermore I have many many apress books, they seem to be pretty well written.

Other books I like: Not complete tho....

PHP and MySQL Web Development- Developers library 4th edition, Luke welling Laura Thomson, 969 pages, has really follow me step by step projects. Nice book to learn or reinforce info.

Beginning PHP and Mysql E-commerce- from novice to Professional 2nd edition by Cristian Darie and Emilian Balanescu,,, contains how to walk through step by step how to create a t-shirt shop project/product catalog/shopping cart,product recomendations, and so so so much more a very thorough walkthrough of start to finish e-commerce, although I do not think this is a beginner book for understanding php,

You must remember there will be code errors in every book after reading many I can say it is every book, but after a while you spot the error and can fix them, it is not possible to have a 100% accurate book it is too easy to leave out a ; " ' . > < ? / \ {}[] or whatever or mess up a variable name.

This book covers so much topics and assumes the reader is new to PHP. Excellent for PHP beginners and as lookup reference for intermediate/advanced programmers. Definitely a must to have book in your desk.

Beginning PHP and MYSQL is definitely for the beginner. That is exactly where I am at. The book describes in detail both of these technologies.
I recommend this book if you are looking at creating PHP pages and interfacing them with MySql...

When i purchased this book, I was expecting a Computer book. To my surprise
the book i purchased contained all the information that i was interested in learning(PHP, MySQL, database) as well as provided a great reading experience.

This book is very interactive and fun to read. The author makes you feel part of the learning process and guides you through learning effectively not only about PHP,MySQL and many tricks of the trade, but also about a lot of other stuff that you most likely did not expect to learn. This will make it this much easier to learn to work with a different platform(Oracle etc.)

Not only do i recommend this book, I urge you to read it as it's a lot more than what the Product Description assumes. This is one of the best computer books that i have ever read, and it's sample code is fantastic.


Congratulations W. Jason Gilmore

And Thank you for allowing me to learn while having fun

Best Regards

J.B

I have first started off programming PHP since 2002 and have built small websites here and there and mostly just 'web tools'. Since it has been some time since I really coded in PHP I decided to get a start from scratch book again, although knowing I still have the basics down. I believe this book is a drag-on, taking up more pages than it should, wasting time in many cases and it reads like a reference book, explaining function after function and in the later chapters PEAR classes/packages, all of which could have just been a URL link in the book to the most up-to-date and online reference for the pertainent resource.

It can get your up to speed with PHP no dobut about that but be prepared for a longer than anticipated read if you do go through this book from cover to cover.

The examples could have been more interesting so the knowledge would stick, and withhold an enthiusiasm on the learner. All of the examples in this book was a bit boring (atleast to me). This book may have been better if you constantly built upon a project, and at the end of the book you would have made something useful by piecing parts together to make a complete working web app. That way you can appreciate, apply and retain the information absorbed so much better. For such reasons I believe the PHP By Example series from another publisher are much better, as those were the books I used in the earlier days.

The author seems to peper advanced topics every now and then in some chapters which would only confuse the beginner. I believe such topics should have been saved for the last few chapters, such that the beginning will be here's how you do it, and in the end this is how you fool-proof it. That way, you get to appreciate the added knowledge rather than the ah-ok and forget it method.

As a word of advice dont judge a book by the number of pages it contains, but you could say in this instance that this book does have alot of information in it if you are primarily testing and developing offline.

This is a great book for any web designer no matter what your experience level. It is a great reference and I was able to teach myself what was needed using this book!

Having Perl knowledge, you can cover the first 200 pages in no time. If you haven't done any programming before, you might need to reference another book for more indepth examples. The bulk of the book is installing and configuring Apache/PHP/MySQL. I found myself skipping alot of it since I rent a server that already has it. I would give 3 stars for his review of PHP (should have provided more examples), and 5 stars for MySQL (feel completely confident exploring it now).

Within weeks of buying this book, I found that my copy rapidly become well worn from use. To me, that's a great indication of how useful and well-written a technical book is. The author's explantions are clear and to the point and the plentiful examples and code snippets really help illustrate the various concepts throughout the book. For me, I like getting my hands 'dirty' by playing with the example code because I find that I learn better that way. When I ran into a problem on an example that I was working on, I emailed the author with a few questions and he responded very quickly and was extremely helpful with suggestions and advice with which I was able to resolve my problem. I highly recommend this book for anyone trying to learn PHP and MySQL.

This book is almost overwhelmingly thorough, which made it, in my experience, an extremely useful resource in preparing for the Zend PHP certification exam, as well as for learning and daily use. While it's incomplete where the test is concerned-you won't find a listing for "Reflection" in the index, for example-it's a useful reference for most of the material on the exam. All of the built-in string and array functions are described clearly and concisely, with examples of use. PHP installation and configuration settings are laid out in the kind of painful detail expected by the exam. There's an introduction to object-oriented programming, overview of regular expressions and a whole series of chapters detailing some of the most useful features of PHP and reviewing some of the most common problems (web services, user authentication, and secure programming, to name a few). And that's before we reach the second half of the book, providing the same kind of detail for MySQL, including PHPs several interfaces to it.

One limitation, from the perspective of an absolute beginner, is the lack of large-scale examples. Gilmore doesn't walk you through the development of a web application; the book is more of a reference text, using smaller examples to illustrate small, specific topics, with the expectation that the reader can assemble those ideas into usable examples. This was probably necessary to enable the chapters to function as individual units, which is one of the book's major strengths.

Books of this size can be daunting to a reader. Gilmore's friendly, readable prose goes a long way toward making this one approachable, as does the modularity, allowing a reader to digest only the chapters needed at any given moment.

This is an excellent book for learning how PHP works and how you can use it. I used it for assistance with creating my first PHP script. All of the information was very clear and straight-forward, as well as being easy to follow. I highly recommend that anyone that is interested in using PHP and building PHP driven web sites purchase and read this book, because it will be very useful. This is a very well written book and is an excellent resource.

I needed to learn PHP and MySQL quickly. It is hard to know which book and which author. So why did I pick this book? And why do I recommend it?

The structure outlined in the book's table of contents, a quick look at Jason's website (chock full of useful information) and the fact that this is an Apress book quickly cemented my confidence. I received the book earlier than expected.

I literally devoured the 1st 18 chapters in an afternoon following the installation of a MAMP environment. I believe that this is a testimony to the clarity of the writing, the structure, and the examples. I typed most of my own and only downloaded the source code from Jason's site later. I highly recommend registering on the [...] site.

I had registered for a PHP and MySQL course prior to purchasing the book but didn't start it until after chapter 20. This book helped me accelerate my website development and made the class super easy. I probably could have saved the course cost and just used the book.

I strongly recommend this book. Thus far I have found a consistent level of quality authors at Apress.

PS - I had no HTML or web development skills before picking up this book. I did have classical 'C' and PERL experience

This was one of the first PHP/MySQL books I purchased. Since then I have purchased 4 or 5 others and I have to say this is one of the best. I used this book along with the PHP Architect Zend study guide to pass the Zend PHP5 Engineer test. I've noticed a lot of technology books suffer from too little editing but I don't recall seeing any errors in this one...

I was looking for book to learn PHP and I came to amazon for this. This wasn't the first book that came up but it was the one that looked like it would be easiest to learn from. This book worked great for teaching myself PHP and I would highly recommend buying it.

Some books you can tell are a labor of love by someone who knows their subject well and is really trying to impart that to his readers. This is one of those books. It covers a lot of ground, with a lot of code snippets. As someone who's new to PHP and MySql, it's been very useful -- I can pretty count on finding the information I need there -- explanations along with code examples so it's easy to both understand it and see the code.

Originally I gave it 5 stars, but after using it for a while and especially getting into the SQL half more, I've downgraded it because it's surprisingly not thorough in how to drive MySQL from PHP. A number of times I could find what needs to be done in SQL but not see how to accomplish it with PHP code, that I had to look up elsewhere. To be sure there are two good chapters on just this, but given the title and audience for the book, you'd think it would be a constant throughout. For example, try to find out how to Insert or Update database rows -- it's not covered (actually in this case, he doesn't give the SQL either). But this just brings it from 5 stars to 4, it's still a very good book.

There are a good many texts on this subject, but not definitive like this one. A lot of technical writers have a tendency to get so bogged down with details they leave the readers behind and frustrated. What Jason does is present the material in a fresh and CONCISE fashion. He doesn't spend paragraph after paragraph beating a subject to death or flinging out stale descriptors; he simply breaks it down into the basic components and tags on "nuggets of wisdom" that help you avoid pitfalls as he builds on the material. Right from the beginning, he engages us with the why and what of programming PHP against a MySQL backend, and then he's off and running. No long-winded chapters, just straightforward information. This is what all technical books should strive to achieve.

Only through the beginning of this book, but so far so good. Excellent explanations and the other reviewers are on the money when they say that this is a good book. Highly recommended.

I really enjoyed reading through the book. It's not only good for someone just learning PHP, but it serves as a great reference material as well. I'd highly recommend this book to anyone getting started with PHP.

I found this to be a very helpful guide in getting into the intense details of configuration, performance tuning and eventually programming PHP web applications. It spends a lot of time on the settings and config, and eventually gets into data access and DB progrmaming. if you're moving over from another platform (like I did), you'll find this very helpful.

This is one of the better programming books I have seen in a long time. It really does give you what you need to set up a testing server on Linux or Windows, and heading down the road solidly. It is also a book that actually grows in value as you learn more coding. In essence, you come to undertsand better how to apply his tools and concepts, and PHP functions.

I do agree with most comments here, that this is not suitable for those who do not have some programming basics.Like so many 'beginning' programming books, its really for someone who simply hasn't programmed in that particular language. Though the examples are succinct, the bits of code are short by and large, and don't give a good view of the over all coding logic. Then suddenly a bit of complex code is thrown at you.

The result creates a bit of frustration for those with some experince, and would be defeating for those of virtually no experience. An example is how Sessions are handled. Unlike ASP 3.0, you have to use session_start() on each page, and check for a session before that, before you can actually call Session Variables. This is fairly significant, and yet absolutely no reference is made of this, so the code he uses doesn't actually work in that bit. I had to go online and hunt it down. Hence, the 4 stars.

Yes, the handling of MySQL is a bit brief, but defintiely gets your feet wet on the most basic of tactics, and he does a very good job of incorporating the uses of Classes here. As well he also talks about different Data Admins.

So, a very good book, useful to the novice and the pro, but in need of a few tweaks.

I would not recommend this book to anyone. The online errata page falls miles short of pointing out all the errors and typos in this book. The last thing I want to do while trying to learn PHP is figure out why the code from the book doesn't work. And when I got it to work, it was always because of code errors. At first I started marking my book so I wouldn't waste my time again but it got rediculous. Now, all I want to do is sell this book but it's all scribbled over. Nonetheless, I'm NOT keeping this book on my library.

I thought this book was over all very helpfull. I have a degree in CS and speaking from a person with a lot of programming experience it was very easy to read and find help on the topics i needed too. I like how the author explains a lot of the programming style, principals and general good coding technique as well as the PHP synax, fuctions and what they do. If you have a bit of experiece this book is a good quick read. If your new to the field there's a lot to take in and you won't cover the entire book in a week but it's a good thing that all the information is there.

Prior to acquiring Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL From Novice to Professional I had acquired a half dozen books on these subjects. I have found some to be excellent in areas, but typically they tend to make significant assumptions about the learner. I was surprised to find Jason Gilmore's recent contribution to the literature to be an exception. The goal of taking the learner from novice to professional is addressed well in this book. I found the chapters on the basics of PHP and MySQL to be an excellent review for me, but it was in his transition to more advanced subjects that Gilmore demonstrates his art. I particularly enjoyed his discussion of arrays. It is thorough, well organized and interesting. Likewise, the subjects of Error and Exception Handling, and Strings and Regular Expressions are managed well.

The chapters dedicated to object-oriented programming capabilities, including the new capabilities in PHP 5 will not disappoint the reader. I found that his explanations clarified concepts that had remained a little fuzzy after reading other books on PHP.

Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL is not just a book for beginners, although beginners will feel comfortable with it. Jason Gilmore's goal is clearly to take the novice quickly to a point at which the new programmer can build professional applications. Subjects such as PHP and LDAP, Templating with Smarty, and Web Services allow the PHP novice to make that transition while enjoying the consistency of a single author/tutor. That is important because this is an author/tutor who has a special feel for the needs of the learner.

I am not a programmer, although I have dabbled in programming, primarily in Visual Basic. Having developed a number of websites using FrontPage, I needed a resource to help me see and understand the world outside of Microsoft. This book was a lucky find, and I recommend it wholeheartedly to PHP beginners. Hopefully, in a not-too-distant future, I will be able to write an advanced user's review of the same book :)

PHP 5 and MySQL is a GREAT book and with out a doubt a new book that is definitely going to be a keeper. This one will not spend much time on the shelf and I am retiring my PHP4 Developers book. I have already folded a hundred corners for reference and I am also picking up on some stuff that I hadn't picked up on before.

Using C# Client with a PHP Web Service
This is a classic example of the diversity of the PHP language and it's ability to fit into even the most proprietary environments. C# is a good language but I learned something totally new here in this example.
I am recommending this book to all the people in the shop, beginner to expert, it works for all.

EXCELLENT BOOK Jason!