PHP books

If you know HTML, this guide will have you building interactive websites quickly. You'll learn how to create responsive, data-driven websites with PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript, regardless of whether you already know how to program. Discover how the powerful combination of PHP and MySQL provides an easy way to build modern websites complete with dynamic data and user interaction. You'll also learn how to add JavaScript to create rich Internet applications and websites.
Learning PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript explains each technology separately, shows you how to combine them, and introduces valuable web programming concepts, including objects, XHTML, cookies, and session management. You'll practice what you've learned with review questions in each chapter, and find a sample social networking platform built with the elements introduced in this book.
This book will help you:

• Understand PHP essentials and the basics of object-oriented programming
• Master MySQL, from database structure to complex queries
• Create web pages with PHP and MySQL by integrating forms and other HTML features
• Learn about JavaScript, from functions and event handling to accessing the Document Object Model
• Use libraries and packages, including the Smarty web template system, PEAR program repository, and the Yahoo! User Interface Library
  
• Make Ajax calls and turn your website into a highly dynamic environment
• Upload and manipulate files and images, validate user input, and secure your applications

This is the second edition of David Power's highly-respected PHP Solutions: Dynamic Web Design Made Easy. This new edition has been updated by David to incorporate changes to PHP since the first edition and to offer the latest techniques--a classic guide modernized for 21st century PHP techniques, innovations, and best practices.
You want to make your websites more dynamic by adding a feedback form, creating a private area where members can upload images that are automatically resized, or perhaps storing all your content in a database. The problem is, you're not a programmer and the thought of writing code sends a chill up your spine. Or maybe you've dabbled a bit in PHP and MySQL, but you can't get past baby steps. If this describes you, then you've just found the right book. PHP and the MySQL database are deservedly the most popular combination for creating dynamic websites. They're free, easy to use, and provided by many web hosting companies in their standard packages.
Unfortunately, most PHP books either expect you to be an expert already or force you to go through endless exercises of little practical value. In contrast, this book gives you real value right away through a series of practical examples that you can incorporate directly into your sites, optimizing performance and adding functionality such as file uploading, email feedback forms, image galleries, content management systems, and much more. Each solution is created with not only functionality in mind, but also visual design.
But this book doesn't just provide a collection of ready-made scripts: each PHP Solution builds on what's gone before, teaching you the basics of PHP and database design quickly and painlessly. By the end of the book, you'll have the confidence to start writing your own scripts or--if you prefer to leave that task to others--to adapt existing scripts to your own requirements. Right from the start, you're shown how easy it is to protect your sites by adopting secure coding practices.

PHP and MySQL are popular open-source technologies that are ideal for quickly developing database-driven Web applications. PHP is a powerful scripting language designed to enable developers to create highly featured Web applications quickly, and MySQL is a fast, reliable database that integrates well with PHP and is suited for dynamic Internet-based applications.

PHP and MySQL Web Development shows how to use these tools together to produce effective, interactive Web applications. It clearly describes the basics of the PHP language, explains how to set up and work with a MySQL database, and then shows how to use PHP to interact with the database and the server.

This practical, hands-on book includes numerous examples that demonstrate common tasks such as authenticating users, constructing a shopping cart, generating PDF documents and images dynamically, sending and managing email, facilitating user discussions, connecting to Web services using XML, and developing Web 2.0 applications with Ajax-based interactivity.

The fourth edition of PHP and MySQL Web Development has been thoroughly updated, revised, and expanded to cover developments in PHP 5 through version 5.3, such as namespaces and closures, as well as features introduced in MySQL 5.1.

It hasn't taken Web developers long to discover that when it comes to creating dynamic, database-driven Web sites, MySQL and PHP provide a winning open-source combination. Add this book to the mix, and there's no limit to the powerful, interactive Web sites that developers can create. With step-by-step instructions, complete scripts, and expert tips to guide readers, veteran author and database designer Larry Ullman gets right down to business: After grounding readers with separate discussions of first the scripting language (PHP) and then the database program (MySQL), he goes on to cover security, sessions and cookies, and using additional Web tools, with several sections devoted to creating sample applications. This guide is indispensable for beginning to intermediate level Web designers who want to replace their static sites with something dynamic. In this edition, the bulk of the new material covers the latest features and techniques with PHP and MySQL. Also new to this edition are chapters introducing jQuery and object-oriented programming techniques.

If you're ready to create web pages more complex than those you can build with HTML and CSS, Head First PHP & MySQL is the ultimate learning guide to building dynamic, database-driven websites using PHP and MySQL. Packed with real-world examples, this book teaches you all the essentials of server-side programming, from the fundamentals of PHP and MySQL coding to advanced topics such as form validation, session IDs, cookies, database queries and joins, file I/O operations, content management, and more.
Head First PHP & MySQL offers the same visually rich format that's turned every title in the Head First series into a bestseller, with plenty of exercises, quizzes, puzzles, and other interactive features to help you retain what you've learned.

• Use PHP to transform static HTML pages into dynamic web sites
• Create and populate your own MySQL database tables, and work with data stored in files
• Perform sophisticated MySQL queries with joins, and refine your results with LIMIT and ORDER BY
• Use cookies and sessions to track visitors' login information and personalize the site for users
• Protect your data from SQL injection attacks
• Use regular expressions to validate information on forms
• Dynamically display text based on session info and create images on the fly
• Pull syndicated data from other sites using PHP and XML

Throughout the book, you'll build sophisticated examples -- including a mailing list, a job board, and an online dating site -- to help you learn how to harness the power of PHP and MySQL in a variety of contexts. If you're ready to build a truly dynamic website, Head First PHP & MySQL is the ideal way to get going.

This book was developed by the same team that authored Murach's JavaScript and DOM Scripting, and it has the same strong content organization that lets you focus on what you need to know, when you need to know it.

So it's a great first book in web programming if you're just starting out:

• It shows you how to get an Apache web server environment set up, so you can test the apps on your computer
  
• It gives you a quick-start course that shows you how to develop, test, and debug PHP applications that get data from a MySQL database...in just 6 chapters

Then, whether you're a beginning or experienced web developer, the rest of the book gives you a full set of professional PHP and MySQL skills:

• The 9-chapter section on PHP teaches you how to build web applications using all the skills that make for a smooth user experience...like how to handle forms, strings, dates, arrays, cookies, sessions, and exceptions
  
• The 5-chapter section on MySQL teaches you all the standard features you need to know for working with databases...like how to design and create a database and how to use SQL and PHP to work with database data
  
• The 4-chapter section on advanced skills teaches you how to handle professional requirements, like ensuring security, generating email, processing images, and working with code from other web sites (like YouTube videos)...and it culminates with a Guitar Shop web site that shows how everything in the book ties together

Regardless of what you're learning next, each chapter covers skills from the simple to the complex. So you can go deeper and deeper to gain a sophisticated set of web and database skills, at your own pace.

So don't wait! Get your copy right away. I think you'll be delighted at how quickly you'll be creating your own database-driven websites using PHP and MySQL.

With PHP for the World Wide Web, Fourth Edition: Visual QuickStart Guide, readers can start from the beginning to get a tour of the programming language, or look up specific tasks to learn just what they need to know. This task-based visual reference guide uses step-by-step instructions and plenty of screenshots to teach beginning and intermediate users this popular open-source scripting language. Leading technology author Larry Ullman guides readers through the latest developments including use and awareness of HTML5 with PHP. Other addressed changes include removal of outdated functions and more efficient ways to tackle common needs.
Both beginning users, who want a thorough introduction to the technology, and more intermediate users, who are looking for a convenient reference, will find what they need here--in straightforward language and through readily accessible examples.

When it comes to creating dynamic web sites, the open source PHP language is red-hot property: used on more than 20 million web sites today, PHP is now more popular than Microsoft's ASP.NET technology. With our Cookbook's unique format, you can learn how to build dynamic web applications that work on any web browser. This revised new edition makes it easy to find specific solutions for programming challenges.

PHP Cookbook has a wealth of solutions for problems that you'll face regularly. With topics that range from beginner questions to advanced web programming techniques, this guide contains practical examples -- or "recipes" -- for anyone who uses this scripting language to generate dynamic web content. Updated for PHP 5, this book provides solutions that explain how to use the new language features in detail, including the vastly improved object-oriented capabilities and the new PDO data access extension. New sections on classes and objects are included, along with new material on processing XML, building web services with PHP, and working with SOAP/REST architectures. With each recipe, the authors include a discussion that explains the logic and concepts underlying the solution.

This book is intended for anyone starting out with PHP programming. If you’ve previously worked in another programming language such as Java, C#, or Perl, you’ll probably pick up the concepts in the earlier chapters quickly; however, the book assumes no prior experience of programming or of building Web applications.

That said, because PHP is primarily a Web technology, it will help if you have at least some knowledge of other Web technologies, particularly HTML and CSS.

Many Web applications make use of a database to store data, and this book contains three chapters on working with MySQL databases. Once again, if you’re already familiar with databases in general — and MySQL in particular — you’ll be able to fly through these chapters. However, even if you’ve never touched a database before in your life, you should still be able to pick up a working knowledge by reading through these chapters.

What This Book Covers

This book gives you a broad understanding of the PHP language and its associated technologies. You explore a wide range of topics, including:

• installing a copy of the PHP engine on Ubuntu Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X; other ways you can install or use PHP; how to write a simple PHP script.
• basic PHP language concepts. variables, data types, operators, expressions, and constants.
• how to change the flow of your scripts by creating decisions and loops. if, else, and switch statements; the ternary operator; and the do, while, for, break, and continue statements. how to nest loops, and how to mix decisions and looping with blocks of HTML.
• PHP’s handling of strings, or sequences of characters; how to create strings; how to retrieve characters from a string; and how to manipulate strings with functions such as strlen(), substr(), strstr(), strpos(), str_replace(), and printf(), to name but a few.
• arrays — variables that can hold multiple values. You learn the difference between indexed and associative arrays, and find out how to create arrays and access their individual elements; array manipulation, including functions such as print_r(), array_slice(), count(), sort(), array_merge(), and list(). You also learn how to create foreach loops, as well as how to work with multidimensional arrays.
• functions — blocks of code that you can use again and again. You look at how to call built-in functions, and how to work with variable functions. You also study how to create your own functions, including defining parameters, returning values, understanding scope, and using anonymous functions. Other function-related topics such as references and recursion are also explored.
• object-oriented programming. You look at the advantages of an object-oriented approach, and learn how to build classes, properties, and methods, and how to create and use objects. You also explore more advanced topics such as overloading, inheritance, interfaces, constructors and destructors, autoloading, and namespaces.
• how to use PHP to create interactive Web forms. You learn how to create HTML forms, how to capture form data in PHP, and how to use PHP to generate dynamic forms. You also explore file upload forms and page redirection.
• how to preserve an application’s state between page views. You explore three different strategies: query strings, cookies, and PHP sessions. Includes an example user login system.
• PHP’s file and directory handling functions. You learn how to open and close files; how to find out more information about a file; how to read from and write to files; how to work with file permissions; how to copy, rename, and delete files; and how to manipulate directories. Simple text editor as an example.
• databases in general and MySQL in particular, and how to work with MySQL databases using PHP. You learn some database and SQL theory; look at how to connect to MySQL from PHP; and study how to retrieve, insert, update, and delete data in a MySQL database.
• PEAR, the PHP Extension and Application Repository. It’s a large collection of reusable code modules that can really help to speed up your application development. You look at how to install and use PEAR packages, and explore three useful packages: Net_UserAgent_Detect, HTML_Table, and HTML_QuickForm.
• ways that your PHP applications can interact with the outside world. A detailed look at date and time handling, including various useful built-in date functions, as well as the DateTime and DateTimeZone classes. Also how to work closely with HTTP request and response headers, how to retrieve Web server information, and how to send email from within your scripts.
• using PHP to generate graphics on the fly. You study some computer graphics fundamentals, then look at how to create new images, as well as modify existing images. Along the way you explore colors, drawing functions, image formats, transparency, opacity, and generating text within images.
• regular expressions. These clever pattern-matching tools let you search for very specific patterns of text within strings; regular expression syntax, how to use PHP’s regular expression functions to search for and replace patterns of text. Lots of examples are included to make the concepts clear.
• XML — eXtensible Markup Language — and how to manipulate XML from within your PHP scripts. You learn about XML and its uses, and look at various ways to read and write XML with PHP, including XML Parser, the XML DOM extension, and SimpleXML. You also take a brief look at XML stylesheets, including XSL and XSLT.
• how to configure PHP, and all the configuration directives available.
• alternative databases to MySQL that are supported by PHP.
• using PHP to write command-line scripts, further enhancing the power and flexibility of your applications.

Also, as you'd imagine, this book covers the new features added to PHP in version 5.3. However, if you're still using an older version of PHP, don't panic – the vast majority of the book applies to all versions of PHP.

Beginning PHP and MySQL: From Novice to Professional, Fourth Edition is a major update of W. Jason Gilmore's authoritative book on PHP and MySQL. The fourth edition includes complete coverage of PHP 5.3 features, including namespacing, an update of AMP stack installation and configuration, updates to Zend Framework, coverage of MySQL Workbench, and much more.

You'll not only receive extensive introductions to the core features of PHP, MySQL, and related tools, but you'll also learn how to effectively integrate them in order to build robust data-driven applications. Gilmore has seven years of experience working with these technologies, and he has packed this book with practical examples and insight into the real-world challenges faced by developers. Accordingly, you will repeatedly return to this book as both a valuable instructional tool and reference guide.

What you’ll learn

• How to install and configure Apache, PHP 5.3, and MySQL
• PHP and object-oriented programming basics
• New PHP 5.3 features and how to use them
• How to move beyond basic PHP, including using the Zend Framework
• How to use MySQL to securely store your website's data
• How to use MySQL Workbench to manage your database

Who this book is for

Developers who want to harness PHP and MySQL to create powerful web applications

Table of Contents

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