Wicked Cool PHP: Real-World Scripts That Solve Difficult Problems

• #18 in Best PHP Books

19 Reviews

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I saw this book on a friends desk and shamelessly took it before he had a chance to read it. I have many php books on my bookshelf, too many. I can now remove quite a few and replace them with this book.

When I first glanced through this book, I was intrigued by the way it was laid out. There are 12 chapters covering many topics that php programmers should know about their language and how browsers interact with a web server using php. Each chapter has many sections that cover a specific topic and most have very useful code examples. The extra feature is a part labeled: "What can go Wrong?". This is a great time saver on how to deal with common issues that might come up when you are working on your php script and implementing the example code. Most of the issues have really good explanations of how and why something could go wrong. What makes this book a real keeper is that they have the "why" explanations. I've always hated it when books tell you to do something a certain way, but never go into any depth on WHY you should do it one way or another. This book has the WHY covered very well for a great number of the examples.

The style of the book makes it easy to read and learn from the examples. In my case, it makes it easy to pickup, read a few pages when I get the chance and then put it down again. I find it easy to pick up right where I left off and keep reading right on to the next example. I like the humor level too. Often authors can get a little too cutesy with their wit and humor. I find that to be a real turn off. William and Brian (The authors) do a great job of keeping the humor light and laughable.

I just made some room on my busy book shelf for this book of 76 time-saving, problem-solving php scripts. I hope my friend doesn't ask for it back...

'Wicked Cool PHP: Real-World Scripts That Solve Difficult Problems' is a fantastic PHP cookbook that is written exactly the way I like books to be written:

- it's fun to read and learn from
- content is broken up logically at the right points
- layout and design is a joy on the eyes and brain
- length is around 200 pages which is within the 2-3 (hundred) range that I like most books to be

Content is broken up over 12 chapters:

01. Basic script stuff
02. Configuring PHP
03. PHP Security
04. Form Fun
05. Text & HTML
06. Dates
07. Files
08. User and Session Tracking
09. Email Excitement
10. Image Tasks
11. Using cURL to talk to web services
12. Other Stuff

The audience for this book hits the rare area of ALL developers from the expert to the newbie to the weekend hacker. There are 76 scripts contained within that nearly anyone could find useful in any project.

I love No Starch books because they don't feel like reference materials, rather they package it in a fun way from the glossy cover to smart design. No Starch gets 'it' when it comes to what geeks want and PHPites you will WANT this book!!

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

writer collected some low level scripts that you can find from everywhere.
my expectation was to find some cool and well designed and deliberated scripts that people developed while developing projects

i was disapointed, it was a bad idea to buy if you know php at least more that beginner

PHP is an easy scripting language for creating web features, but like any software it has its quirks. That's where WICKED COOL PHP: REAL-WORLD SCRIPTS THAT SOLVE DIFFICULT PROBLEMS comes into play. It's for those who have some experience with the scripting program but need more specifics to tweak applications. From scripts to process credit cards, template HTML and serve dynamic images to tracking visitors with cookies and editing images and text, WICKED COOL PHP is packed with tips and comes from two experienced PHP developers: perfect for any computer collection catering to PHP users.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

This is probably the first time reviews on amazon completely failed me. if you have any coding experience at all, php or otherwise, move on. if you want proper syntax/style, move on. if you have access to [...] or even google, do so as well. there is nothing in this book that you will not get for free on any random coding related site, except it being free, updated and better. now, if you dont mind paying for crappy content you may get something out of it if you havent moved passed the "hello world" tutorial.

This book is a good start to learning some cool php scripts, but I found myself spending lots of time on google and other sites to actually get any of it to work. A few apis are used that are outdated, like yahoo and google maps. Additionally, the book has quite a few spelling errors and at times can be hard to follow (ie. what function goes in what file, when did the author break code into multiple files, etc. If you don't mind looking around online, this book gives you some neat ideas for cool php scripts.

I had a background in HTML/CSS and Actionscript but had never done much with PHP. I was looking for a book with simple, real world examples that would get me moving in the right direction. This was that book. After quickly digesting several of the short, well written chapters, I was able to do a few things that I wanted to do as well as several things I never dreamed of. This book gave me enough of a start that I now feel comfortable using the vast array of free PHP resources available on the web to continue my learning. This is a not a reference manual or a tome on PHP/MySQL application development, but it's a great entry into working with PHP.

Pros: The book is fun and easy to ready.
Cons: Teaches some bad coding styles and has a number of spelling mistakes. eg. Reg Ex for validating email has a typo making it useless.

Overall: More for beginners just starting to put what they know into practice. The code provided isn't ready for production environment.

I have coded a good deal in PHP and read a lot of literature on the language along the way. On one's way of coding this or that web site most programmers run across the same challenges, often simple problems but without an elegant solution or at least not an obvious and handy one. The book appears to be written by experienced coders that have collected their slickest solutions to these problems and structured them into an easy to read format. As an example: How do I convert plain-text with line breaks into HTML markup? Sounds easy enough until one looks at the variety of pitfalls that this problem has. The authors offer an extremely elegant approach to this (function), which, while admittedly not of their own making, appears to me as unique. One cannot appreciate these little gems without paying attention to the detail.

The book covers quite a bit of ground and is not targeting an audience of complete newcomers to the language but those that have coded before and and are now wondering 'whether there wasn't a better way of doing things'.

The books is well written and reads easily. It is entirely pragmatic, the authors are not peddling programming ideology but present solutions to everyday problems. Most solutions point out their limitations and caveats and potential ways of improving upon them after clarifying the principles.

I have read this book rather rapidly, probably due to its informal style, almost entertaining. I only realized in hindsight my desire to go back and change this or that portion of code I have written in the past to improve upon simplicity, readability and reliability. Now having digested the material I am quite sure I will reference it again when running across the outlined areas again.

It's a definite thumbs up for a no-nonsense approach to everyday PHP programming challenges.

This is an excellent reference book with lots of good chunks of PHP code to incorporate quickly and easily into new or existing code. I'd recommend it as a good reference book with coe you can immediately deploy. Haven't had a chance to look through entire book but realize that it is going to be something I reference repeatedly.

This book offered me examples i badly needed to complete my online class assignment project.

The examples are easy and well explained, so buying this book will not cause you to have any remorse for buying stuff that confuses you. This is the book where you get all the explanations. Even when the script is self explanatory the author takes no chances.. he explains it! One thing to note is that this book is for people who already have some knowledge about PHP.

Highly recommend it.
Wicked Cool PHP: Real-World Scripts That Solve Difficult Problems

The most important things with online buying is a good price, fast delivery and the product received is the item and condition stated. I would recommend and buy from this user again.

This is the best PHP book that I have read ever. It is very easy, and funny, to read. It has a lot of examples that everybody will need in some moment.

Very well written, wonderful examples. Scripts are broken down and explained in detail, piece by piece.

This book doesn't waste your time. It isn't so much about code snippets as it is about tactics and strategy. You have a site. You want to put some dynamic content on it. Here's what you do, using PHP and SQL. One step at a time, it tells you the best practices for security, for email, for XML parsing. And the author is not afraid to express strong opinions along the way, and to explain why some extensions and practices are better than others. NOTE: You must know how to write basic PHP code to get the most out of the book. It isn't written for beginning programmers. But it's really useful even if you develop with some other language.

I've been searching for a book like this for a long time, and it doesn't disappoint. 76 useful scripts, and even an introduction to regular expressions! Perfect for anyone working on a project.

I was looking for a PHP script online one day and stumbled across this book in my search. After reading the reviews, I decided to give the book a shot. As a person who owns over 15 PHP books, I was wondering whether I would find something magical in this book compared to the others. I was VERY surprised!

This book is absolutely AWESOME!!! The books chapters are very well organized and then broken down into important topics of interest under that. It bills itself as "real world scripts that solve difficult problems". This book succeeds in this. The book also includes 3 full programs.

I have found use for 45 of the 73 listed scripts. If you are a PHP developer, this book is a MUST for your arsenal.

I learned a lot of useful scripts/concepts in the two hours using this book. It's great coz it's not a basic intro to programming book, but it's simple enough for me who's new to PHP but has some programming background. The author also explains the code clearly. I like the organization of the topics. It's easy to just go to the topic I want and related topics are clearly pointed to.

Good book. I first borrowed it from a friend then decided to get my own. A nice collection of scripts, they're different flavors for different projects. You could think of it as kind of similar to surfing the web for scripts and studying them, only cleaner and more organized because you have written explanations. Needless to say it's not the kind of book you would get to learn PHP if you're totally new to it, at least I don't think so, but it's handy otherwise when you want exposure to new practical examples and ideas WITH their explanation/documentation. Good book.