Professional PHP4 XML

ISBN 1-861007-21-3 Price £36.99 UK
Luis Argerich, Ken Egervari, Matt Anton, Chris Lea, Charlie Killian, Chris Hubbard, James Fuller
             16 Chapters, 7 Appendices and Index in 945 pages

Chapter List


        1    Introduction
        2    PHP Fundamentals
        3    XML Fundamentals
        4    XML Derivatives
        5    SAX
        6    DOM
        7    XPath
        8    XSL
        9    XML Classes
        10  Putting it Together
        11  Syndicated Content
          12   XML to DB, DB to XML
        13  XML Storage
        14  PHP as a Client
        15  SVG
        16  XML-RPC
        17  Case Study: A calendar Server Using XML-RPC

             PHP4 XML Language Reference
             Xpath Reference Synopsis
An impressive list of well healed and very experienced developers set out to write and publish a weighty and well thought out book about the subject of finding a way to use PHP and XML to process data quickly and effectively without any problems.  There are some excellent examples of how to do something with these programming languages.  There are other Wrox books which you can read at the same time as this one which provide an interactive back drop for someone who wishes to learn more about Open Source or Free Software.  All Wrox publications have some good examples of code and they explain how to add to some basic ideas.  The code is laid out in grayed out boxes similar to the one that you can see below..






class FilterBuildBooks extends AbstractFilter
{
        var $oneBook = 0;
        var $book;
        var $property = 0;
        var $books = Array();

        function GetBooks()
        {
                return $this->books;
         }

        function StartElementHandler ($name, $attribs)
        {
                if    ($name == "book")    {
                        $this->books[ ] = new Book ();
                        $this->oneBook = 1;
                }    else    {
                        if ($this->oneBook)    {
                             $this->property = $name;
                        }
                }
                $this->listener->StartElementHandler ($name, $attribs);
        }
       
        function EndElementHandler ($name)
        {

                $this->property = 0;
                if     ($name == "book")     {
                        $this->oneBook = 0;
                }
                $this->listener->EndElementHandler ($name);
Use of SAX to create PHP objects from XML

Review

As the introduction so carefully points out PHP is a good programming language and XML is a good way of interacting with data.  The support within PHP for XML while still young is sufficiently mature that the combination of the two is now viable.  This means that someone has to publish some documentation about it in order to open up a discussion about what it is that may or may not be possible.   Professional PHP4 XML is that documentation and it is a welcome addition to all of the other documentation which is available through the internet.

This book covers the PHP language and is up to date with the latest 4.2 release.  It also covers the XML standard and the interaction between these widely used technologies. You will learn the "core" standards for XML processing such as Xpath, Document Object Model, SAX and XSLT and how to use them from PHP. Satellite standards, vocabularies and other technical topics related to XML processing are also covered with examples tips and suggestions from an experienced group of PHP programmers and XML experts.  Who is this book for ?  It is aimed at PHP programmers who need to process XML data or interface different systems using XML.  It serves as a reference and possible source of inspiration.  Non PHP programmers who need to construct a web based frontend for an application using XML can learn how to do it using PHP because the book also covers the basic foundations of PHP programming.

Some of the well known elements of web programming are discussed in the earlier part of the book.  Basic structures are followed on by some XML structures and functions etc.  After this SAX and DOM are shown and what can be done with those.  The potential lack of harmony or problem with a discontinuous argument of some sort is taken care of at page 391 where the tenth chapter entitled "Putting it Together" shows us what kind of things can be done with this technology if you use your head a bit.  The other remaining seven chapters go into some complex explanation to this end.
 
If you haven't been exposed to these programming methods before you might do well to get hold of this publication and read it from cover to cover.  You will find out why people are walking away from other programming methods.


Review by Richard Ibbotson.