PHP books

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.

 

 

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

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 intermediate- to advanced 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 versions of both technologies: PHP 6 (due out in 2008) and MySQL 5 (available now). The book's publication date is likely to beat the official release of PHP 6, making it one of the first books available on the subject.

This book covers the basics of PHP and MySQL along with introductions to advanced topics including object-oriented programming and how to build Web sites that incorporate authentication and security. After you complete this course, you will be able to use PHP and MySQL to build professional quality, database-driven Web sites.

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.

With PHP for the World Wide Web, Third 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 new features in PHP 6, focusing primarily on improved support for handling any language in a Web site. Other addressed changes include removal of outdated and insecure features, plus new 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 thorough readily accessible examples.

This book takes you beyond the PHP basics to the enterprise development practices used by professional programmers. Updated for PHP 5.3 with new sections on closures, namespaces, and continuous integration, this edition will teach you about object features such as abstract classes, reflection, interfaces, and error handling. You’ll also discover object tools to help you learn more about your classes, objects, and methods.

Then you’ll move into design patterns and the principles that make patterns powerful. You’ll learn both classic design patterns and enterprise and database patterns with easy-to-follow examples.

Finally, you’ll discover how to put it all into practice to help turn great code into successful projects. You’ll learn how to manage multiple developers with Subversion, and how to build and install using Phing and PEAR. You’ll also learn strategies for automated testing and building, including continuous integration.

Taken together, these three elements—object fundamentals, design principles, and best practices—will help you develop elegant and rock-solid systems.

What you’ll learn

• Learn to work with object fundamentals: writing classes and methods, instantiating objects, and creating powerful class hierarchies using inheritance.
• Master advanced object-oriented features, including static methods and properties.
• Learn how to manage error conditions with exceptions, and create abstract classes and interfaces.
• Understand and use design principles to deploy objects and classes effectively in your projects.
• Learn about design patterns, their purpose and structure, and the underlying principles that govern them.
• Discover a set of powerful patterns that you can deploy in your own projects.
• Learn about the tools and practices that can guarantee a successful project including unit testing; version control; build, installation, and package management; and continuous integration.

Who this book is for

This book is suitable for anyone with at least a basic knowledge of PHP who wants to use its object-oriented features in their projects.

Those who already know their interfaces from their abstracts may well still find it hard to use these features in their projects. These users will benefit from the book’s emphasis on design. They will learn how to choose and combine the participants of a system, how to read design patterns, and how to use them in their code.

Finally, this book is for PHP coders who want to learn about the practices and tools (version control, testing, continuous integration, etc.) that can make projects safe, elegant, and stable.

Book Description

• Essentially three books in one, provides thorough introductions to the PHP language, MySQL database, and shows you how these two technologies can be effectively integrated to build powerful websites.
• Provides over 500 code examples, including real-world tasks such as providing an auto-login feature, sending HTML-formatted email, testing password guessability, and uploading files via a Web interface.
• Updated for MySQL 5, includes new chapters introducing triggers, stored procedures, and views.

From the Back Cover

Interested in becoming a master of the PHP language and MySQL database but don't know where to begin? This bestselling book ranks among the most thorough and practical guides in print, covering all of the key concepts and features, and showing you how to effectively integrate PHP and MySQL to build powerful websites.

The book begins with a vast overview of PHP's capabilities, starting with a survey of the installation and configuration process on both the Windows and Linux platforms. Next, several chapters are devoted to basic PHP concepts, including variables, datatypes, arrays, functions, string manipulation, and processing user input. Other key PHP topics are also covered, including PEAR, session handling, LDAP integration, the Smarty templating engine, Web services, and PDO.

Next up is a presentation of MySQL's key features. You're first guided through MySQL's installation and configuration process, and are presented with an introduction to its storage engines, datatypes, administration utilities, security features, and data import/export facilities. New MySQL 5-specific chapters have been added in this edition, covering triggers, stored procedures, and views. Along the way, you'll gain insight into PHP's assortment of MySQL functions (using both the mysql and mysqli extensions), and learn how to create and execute queries, perform searches, and carry out key database tasks from within your Web application.

What You Will Learn from This Book

• Install and configure Apache, PHP and MySQL on both Windows and Linux
• Accept and process information submitted via HTML forms
• Authenticate users and track user preferences and data using PHP's session-handling capabilities
• Process Web-based file uploads using the HTTP_Upload PEAR package
• Create your own RSS aggregator using Magpie, and process XML files in amazingly efficient fashion using SimpleXML
• Use both command-line and graphical MySQL clients to effectively manage your data
• Secure the MySQL server, creating roles and restricting access even at very granular levels
• Effectively integrate PHP and MySQL to create dynamic, data-driven web applications

Who This Book Is For

This book is for the budding web developer searching for a powerful and low-cost solution to building flexible, scalable websites.

Wicked Cool PHP capitalizes on the success of the "Wicked Cool" series from No Starch Press. Rather than focus on the basics of the language, Wicked Cool PHP provides (and explains) PHP scripts that can be implemented immediately to simplify webmasters' lives. These include unique scripts for processing credit cards, checking for valid email addresses, templating, overriding PHP's default settings, and serving dynamic images and text. Readers will also find extensive sections on working with forms, words, and files; ways to harden PHP by closing common security holes; and instructions for keeping data and transactions secure. By exploring working code, readers learn how to customize their webserver's behavior, prevent spammers from adding annoying comments, scrape information from other web sites, and much more. This is a book that's sure to appeal to PHP programmers who have been there and done that and who want a book that delivers meaty content, not only promise.

Programming PHP, 2nd Edition, is the authoritative guide to PHP 5 and is filled with the unique knowledge of the creator of PHP (Rasmus Lerdorf) and other PHP experts. When it comes to creating websites, the PHP scripting language is truly a red-hot property. In fact, PHP is currently used on more than 19 million websites, surpassing Microsoft's ASP .NET technology in popularity. Programmers love its flexibility and speed; designers love its accessibility and convenience.

As the industry standard book on PHP, all of the essentials are covered in a clear and concise manner. Language syntax and programming techniques are coupled with numerous examples that illustrate both correct usage and common idioms. With style tips and practical programming advice, this book will help you become not just a PHP programmer, but a good PHP programmer. Programming PHP, Second Edition covers everything you need to know to create effective web applications with PHP. Contents include:

• Detailed information on the basics of the PHP language, including data types, variables, operators, and flow control statements
• Chapters outlining the basics of functions, strings, arrays, and objects
• Coverage of common PHP web application techniques, such as form processing and validation, session tracking, and cookies
• Material on interacting with relational databases, such as MySQL and Oracle, using the database-independent PEAR DB library and the new PDO Library
• Chapters that show you how to generate dynamic images, create PDF files, and parse XML files with PHP
• Advanced topics, such as creating secure scripts, error handling, performance tuning, and writing your own C language extensions to PHP
• A handy quick reference to all the core functions in PHP and all the standard extensions that ship with PHP

Praise for the first edition:

"If you are just getting into the dynamic Web development world or you are considering migrating from another dynamic web product to PHP, Programming PHP is the book of choice to get you up, running, and productive in a short time."

--Peter MacIntrye, eWeek

"I think this is a great book for programmers who want to start developing dynamic websites with PHP. It gives a detailed overview of PHP, lots of valuable tips, and a good sense of PHP's strengths."

--David Dooling, Slashdot.org