Tobias Ratschiller and Till Gerken  New Riders  £30.99
9 Chapters in 389 Pages.

Contents

Chapters

             Introduction 
        1    Development Concepts
        2    Advanced Syntax
        3    Application Design: A Real Life Experience
        4    Web Application Concepts
        5    Basic Web Application Strategies
        6    Database Access with PHP
        7    Cutting Edge Applications
        8    Case Studies
        9    Extending PHP 4.0: Hacking the Core of PHP
 

    Synopsis

HTML sites can become complex and unwieldy beasties that are difficult to maintain.  A way round this is to use a scripting language like PHP which can produce some brilliant web sites with the objective of minimum amount of maintenence.  A good example of a PHP site is our own Phorum bulletin board ....  www.sheflug.org.uk   Highly sophisticated web applications can be created with PHP.

    Review

Without looking into our own bulletin board you might suppose that PHP was just a sameling old boring scripting language for yet another boring server.  This is not so.  PHP is a little bit like the HTML language and it intereacts with it to produce the kind of easy to use web pages such as the ones that make up our bulletin board.  The Zend engine is the basic scripting engine that drives PHP.  It's owned by Zend Technologies Limited and it's licenced for free use under the Q public licence.

Craig Andrews is the author of our bulletin board.  When he produced the first beta version of the software he used all sorts of books from various publishers as well as online resources.  He said that the Newriders PHP 4.0 book was the one that taught him all of the things that he was looking for and it got him that new job that he had always wanted.  I think this gives a good example of what can be achieved with the right book if you can just find it and get hold of it ?  What is it that this particular book has to offer you .......

There is no doubt in my own mind that this is one the best books on PHP programming that I have so far seen.  The first chapter sets out to explain development concepts in the form of coding conventions, planning and advanced syntax unavoidable requirements.  This is probably very helpful if you haven't had a formal education in software engineering and if some development concepts are still a bit hazy for you.  Chapter two goes into PHP and advanced syntax.  This same educational concept is followed in the many C and C++ programming courses that are out there.  Not knowing how to handle multidimensional arrays. classes and other variables is a lot like trying to drive a car without first passing a test.  The third chapter is probably the kind of life saver that most people involved in programming aren't able to get hold of too often.  A real life example gives a few clues about where to start on something that you didn't understand and what it is that might be useful in the way of further reading.  Web application concepts goes on to describe an understanding of internet infrastructure.   Even security concepts are discussed.  Following on from this there is the section on basic web application strategies.  It's reasonably easy to understand for a first time reader who has an interest in further self development.  Database access with PHP is one of the nicer features of PHP based applications.  This doesn't mean that it's all that easy to understand how to produce such an application and it is helpful if someone or a book can point you in the right direction before you get started.

Cutting edge applications and case studies gives the kind of background info that is always useful.  The final chapter goes into extending PHP and your own understanding of hacking the core of PHP can be improved with the help of this short but invaluable section of the book.  At the start of it there is a short two line intro - Those who know don't talk ....  Those who talk don't know - does seem to be a general belief amongst programmers tho' .  

I'd recommend this publication to anyone who wants to know more about PHP.  After all .... we did use it to build our own PHP based bulletin board which has been working without a single hitch on a Red Hat Linux server for many months now.  Maybe you should learn some PHP and try it for yourself ?

Review by Richard Ibbotson