Learning PHP 5
On May - 30 - 20105 COMMENTS
- ISBN13: 9780596005603
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
PHP has gained a following among non-technical web designers who need to add interactive aspects to their sites. Offering a gentle learning curve, PHP is an accessible yet powerful language for creating dynamic web pages. As its popularity has grown, PHP’s basic feature set has become increasingly more sophisticated. Now PHP 5 boasts advanced features–such as new object-oriented capabilities and support for XML and Web Services–that will please even the most… More >>
I bought an O’Reilly book to teach myself perl & it was great. I’m writing a review about this one because I’m frustrated. The first six chapters go by like a breeze for folks familiar with other programming languages (I use perl, mel, c, html, studio). well, that’s not entirely true. I couldn’t get my apache server to execute any of my php code (I’m on a new mac mini). I followed all the instructions in appendix A to no avail. Finally, I just uploaded my php scripts to a webserver & my code worked there. but that’s super annoying because I have to upload my php file every time I want to test it (& sometimes my internet connection is slow). whatever. anyway: when I got to chapter 7 none of the examples worked anymore & it is extremely vague exactly how you’re supposed to run some commands. for example: if you want to set up a database, you run the following command only one time:
CREATE TABLE dishes (
dish_id INT,
dish_name VARCHAR(255),
price DECIMAL(4,2),
is_spicy INT
)
but where do you run it from? also, the book relies heavily on using extensions that weren’t installed in my version of php. additionally, I’m not sure if certain examples are just there to demonstrate what should work, or things that actually work. ie: this code is supposed to connect you to a database:
require ‘DB.php’;
$db = DB::connect(‘mysql://penguin:top^hat@db.example.com/restaurant’);
is that actually supposed to work, or is it just an example? if it doesn’t work for me (which it didn’t), then I have to figure out what’s wrong w/my system etc.
another frustrating this is the book recommends using several commands (like running system commands) that my webserver doesn’t allow for security reasons. this problem should at least be addressed in the book. hopefully, I’m not just frustrated with php itself because several of my coworkers swear by it. but I’ve had more luck tracking down answers to very basic questions online than finding them in this book.
Rating: 2 / 5
If you’re in a Windows shop, save yourself a lot of pain: download EasyPHP (mentioned on p. 261). Then substitute a version 5.2 php for C:EasyPHPphp (which is version 4.3) . HINT: EasyPHP uses the php.ini in the conf-files dir, not the one in the php.
Rating: 3 / 5
Why do I have to give this even 1 star? The early examples in the book didn’t work, so I put it down and never went back to it.
Rating: 1 / 5
I was hoping this book with explain the fine points in PHP 5 but NO! Starting on the 7th example (page 10), the author made two mistakes in his example: This is no such variable as $dbq and q->numrows is suppose to be q->numrows(). And there’s more. I expected more from an O’reily author but….
For a beginning book, this book assumes you understand PEAR, have it installed and working. This is your basic college textbook: lots of theories — no application. It looks like some college professor wrote it.
This book is a good starting point for the beginning PHP programmers but it it’s not useful in trying to apply PHP to anything. Bottomline: I stopped after chapter one.
Rating: 1 / 5
Basic book on php. Not very good although well written. Cheats on some tasks (like SQL) by relying on PEAR etc. Nothing about object oriented php nor specifics on PHP 5.0 As such, the title is a rip off. Typical O’Reilly fluff.
Rating: 3 / 5