Amazon.co.uk
Early sections show what PHP is and how it works, with basic data types, flow control, and other topics you'll need to get started. But the heart of the book is a full reference to PHP 4 functions. Organised by topic, this text provides over 400 pages of reference to several hundred PHP calls, along with a description of what they do. Clearly organised and presented, this book will help you find what you need quickly (instead of relying on PHP's often cumbersome online help). In particular, readers will appreciate the coverage of database functions, including the separate calls for MySQL, ODBC, and Oracle. You'll also see what PHP can do with XML.
The last part of the book reverts to tutorial mode, first with a section on algorithms that discusses ways to sort and search PHP arrays. Final sections look at some strategies you can use to integrate PHP into the software design process, in which the strategies of combining HTML content with dynamic PHP scripts are shown. There is also useful advice for increasing performance with PHP. (It would seem that upgrading to PHP 4 is a must, because the new version offers a real performance boost.)
PHP is clearly a popular choice for Web applications today. If you buy just one book on PHP, consider Core PHP Programming. It offers an approachable tutorial that will put basic PHP script development into the hands of beginners, and provides a useful reference for everyday development once you've gotten a handle on how to use it. --Richard Dragan
Amazon.com
Early sections show what PHP is and how it works, with basic data types, flow control, and other topics you'll need to get started. But the heart of the book is a full reference to PHP 4 functions. Organized by topic, this text provides over 400 pages of reference to several hundred PHP calls, along with a description of what they do. Clearly organized and presented, this book will help you find what you need quickly (instead of relying on PHP's often cumbersome online help). In particular, readers will appreciate the coverage of database functions, including the separate calls for MySQL, ODBC, and Oracle. You'll also see what PHP can do with XML.
The last part of the book reverts to tutorial mode, first with a section on algorithms that discusses ways to sort and search PHP arrays. Final sections look at some strategies you can use to integrate PHP into the software design process, in which the strategies of combining HTML content with dynamic PHP scripts are shown. There is also useful advice for increasing performance with PHP. (It would seem that upgrading to PHP 4 is a must, because the new version offers a real performance boost.)
PHP is clearly a popular choice for Web applications today. If you buy just one book on PHP, consider Core PHP Programming. It offers an approachable tutorial that will put basic PHP script development into the hands of beginners, and provides a useful reference for everyday development once you've gotten a handle on how to use it. --Richard Dragan
Topics covered:
- History and introduction to PHP
- Installing PHP on Apache/Unix and IIS/NT
- PHP script basics
- PHP language tutorial (including data types, variables, and operators)
- Flow control statements
- PHP functions (arguments, recursion, and dynamic function calls)
- Single and multidimensional arrays
- PHP classes
- Creating Web pages in PHP
- Environment variables
- File uploads and file I/O
- PHP session management
- PHP function reference
- I/O functions (including files and compressed files, session handling, network I/O, and FTP)
- Data functions (including arrays, hashing, strings, and regular expressions)
- Mathematical functions
- Date and time functions
- Image functions
- Database functions (including support for MySQL, ODBC, Oracle, and Postgres)
- Miscellaneous functions (including XML functions)
- Algorithms for sorting and searching in PHP
- Parsing and tokenizing strings
- Database programming how-to
- Authenticating
- Sending e-mail
- Software engineering basics with PHP
- Integrating PHP and HTML
- Using CVS for version control
- Optimization hints
From Library Journal
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.
Kurzbeschreibung
Synopsis
Der Autor über sein Buch
Before I had the idea to write a book about PHP, every few days I would read a message on the PHP mailing list and be surprised with some new, amazing feature. It began to dawn on me that what I needed, what I craved, was to know the complete story of PHP. So, true to the RTFM principle, I delved into the online documentation. While most of the functionality was documented, it was fairly sparse. My colleagues with less programming experience weren't finding it terribly approachable.
I wrote a few descriptions for the undocumented functions, and I might have remained content. But slowly the idea to write my own manual began to take shape after learning that Prentice Hall was interested in recruiting authors. Could I, never having written anything longer than a college term paper, actually put together a 500-page technical reference? I was willing to try! Whatever happened, it would be a great adventure. Plus, I would be able to contribute to PHP's growing prosperity.
I set about studying the structures of some of my favorite computer books. I also considered the different reasons why anyone would buy a book about PHP. First, there were people like me who would find it useful to have a physical reference to leave open on a desk. The reason I put the functional reference in chapters eight through thirteen is so that the weight of the surrounding chapters would help keep the book open.
I also considered that most of the people asking questions on the PHP mailing list started their messages like "I just found PHP today! It's great, but how do I..." Some of these people would benefit from a primer on programming. Others just needed recipes for common coding problems. I chose to spend the first seven chapters of the book discussing programming concepts (operators, variables, functions) in the context of PHP. I also included several chapters dealing with common programming problems such as sorting and graphics production.
And of course, I included lots of examples. Sometimes a code snippet can tell more than several paragraphs. But I did my best to use realistic examples. Many of the examples in the book are based on code from some of the projects I've worked on.
PHP is proof that the Open Source concept is how software ought to be. No one pays for PHP, but many people are making money because it exists. This book and others are perhaps the smallest part. PHP helps sell other software such as RedHat Linux and Apache Stronghold. And I can't count the number of times it has allowed me to create Web applications with less effort than with other server-side technologies. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.
Buchrückseite
- Master PHP 4 — the open source Web scripting breakthrough
- Contains expert coverage of syntax, functions, design, and debugging
- Leverage the amazing performance of the new Zend engine!
- 650+ real-world code examples
- CD-ROM includes source code, plus everything you'll need to run PHP 4 implementations on Windows and UNIX
Foreword by Andi Gutmans
Praise for the first edition:
Core PHP Programming has proved itself an invaluable technical reference. I highly recommend it for beginners as well, since the official PHP manual often assumes too much knowledge on behalf of the user. Leon's strength is that he does not try to sound more technical than needed, simply for the sake of impressing other programmers. In short, a must-have for any PHP user, beginning or advanced!
—Zack Beatty, Enterprise Web Engineer
The experienced developer's guide to PHP!
Master PHP 4, the open source, high-performance, cross-platform solution for server-side scripting!
Core PHP Programming, Second Edition is the #1 practical guide to PHP 4 for Web developers. With the guidance of top PHP developer Leon Atkinson, you'll learn everything you'll need to build robust, fast Web applications — and deploy them on leading Web servers, from Apache to Microsoft Internet Information Server.
Atkinson covers PHP syntax, the key building blocks of PHP scripts, and every PHP function, including I/O, data, and math functions, time, date, configuration, database, graphics, and network functions. He presents PHP at work in sample code that demonstrates sorting, searching, parsing, string evaluation, and more. You'll even find detailed, real-world insights into PHP 4 program design and debugging!
Core PHP Programming delivers
- Thorough, easy-to-understand coverage of PHP syntax and functions
- Step-by-step guidance for PHP database integration
- Design and optimization techniques for maximum performance and extensibility
- Practical debugging solutions
CD-ROM includes PHP 4 source code and Windows binaries plus all the code examples from the book!
Über den Autor
Prolog. Abdruck erfolgt mit freundlicher Genehmigung der Rechteinhaber. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.
Preface
My first inkling that I might like to write a book about PHP was born out of the frustration I felt with the original PHP manual. It was a single, large HTML file with all the functions in alphabetical order. It was also on a Web server thousands of miles away from me in Canada, so it was slow to show up in my browser, even across a T1 connection. It wasn't long before it was saved on my desktop. After struggling for several months, it started to dawn on me that I could probably organize the information into a more usable format. Around that time the next version of PHP began to take shape, and with it a new manual was developed. It was organized around PHP's source code but was less complete than the old PHP manual. I contributed descriptions for some of the missing functions, but I still had the idea to write my own manual. In the spring of 1998 Prentice Hall PTR gave me the opportunity to do so. It is an honor for my book to be among Prentice Hall classics such as The C Programming Language by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie.
This book assumes a certain familiarity with the Internet, the Web, and HTML programming, but it starts with the most basic ideas of programming. It will introduce you to concepts common to all programming languages and how they work in PHP. You can expect this book to teach you how to create rich, dynamic Web sites. You can also expect it to remain on your desk as a reference for how PHP works, or even as a recipe book for solving common design problems.
This book is not for dummies, nor is it for complete idiots. That you are considering PHP is a great indication of your intelligence, and I'd hate to insult it. Some of the ideas in this book are hard to understand. If you don't quite get them the first time, I encourage you to reread and experiment with the examples.
If you are uncomfortable writing HTML files, you may wish to develop this skill first. Marty Hall's Core Web Programming provides an excellent introduction. Beyond HTML, numerous other topics I touch on fall out of scope. Whenever I can, I suggest books and Web sites that provide more information. There are even some aspects of PHP that range too far from the focus on writing PHP scripts. An example is writing extensions for PHP in C. This involves a healthy knowledge of C programming that I cannot provide here. Related to this is compiling and installing PHP. I attempt to describe the process of installing PHP, which can involve compiling the source code, but I can't attempt to pursue all the different combinations of operating system, Web servers, and extensions. If you are comfortable running make files, you will find the information that comes with the PHP source code more than adequate.
Along with the explanation text I've provided real-world examples. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to adapt some contrived academic problem to the Web site you must have working by the end of the week. Some of the examples are based on code from live Web sites I have worked on since discovering PHP in 1997. Others are distilled from the continual discussion being conducted on the PHP mailing lists.
This book is organized into four main sections: an introduction to programming; a reference for all the functions in PHP; a survey of common programming problems; and finally a guide for applying this knowledge to Web site development. The first section deals with the issues involved with any programming language: what a PHP script looks like; how to control execution; how to deal with data. The second section organizes the functions by what they do and gives examples of their use. PHP offers many functions, so this section is larger than the rest. The third section deals with solving common programming problems such as sorting and generating graphics. The last section offers advice about how to create a whole Web site with PHP.
I've chosen a few conventions for highlighting certain information, and I'm sure you will find them obvious, but for the sake of clarity I'll spell them out. Whenever I use a keyword such as the name of a script or a function, I place it in a monospace font. For example, I may speak about the print function. Another convention I've used is to place email addresses and Web addresses inside angle brackets. Examples are the email address by which you can contact me, <corephp@leonatkinson.com>, and my Web site,
<http://www.leonatkinson.com/>
