| | |  | General | Home » » » » Head First PHP & MySQL | | | | | | | Product Promotions: | | | | | Description: | | 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.
| | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Lynn Beighley | | Paperback:
| 814 pages | | Publisher:
| O'Reilly Media | | Publication Date:
| December 29, 2008 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0596006306 | | Product Length:
| 9.2 inches | | Product Width:
| 8.0 inches | | Product Height:
| 1.6 inches | | Product Weight:
| 3.26 pounds | | Package Length:
| 9.13 inches | | Package Width:
| 7.95 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.42 inches | | Package Weight:
| 2.95 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 53 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 53 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
53 of 55 found the following review helpful:
 Best Beginner's PHP and MySQL Book Out ThereMay 19, 2009
By Picky Reader
"Picky Reader"
I have been trying to learn PHP and MySQL for a couple of months now. I have read (well, started) about 4 beginner's books. I would understand a little bit of it, but then the more I got into a book, the more confused I would get. It just seemed like things were either coming at me too fast or the writing style didn't flow, at which point I stopped learning. Not so with Head First PHP & MySQL. This book I absolutely cannot put down. The style makes learning so easy and fun that I just want to keep reading it. The funny thing is, the first time I saw a Head First book, I thought the layout would hinder my learning, not help it. Boy, was I wrong.
Another great thing about this book is the flow. Most PHP and MySQL books start off with about 3-4 chapters of PHP, then 3-4 chapters of MySQL, then the rest of the book teaching you how to use the two programs together. But by the time I got to the chapters learning how to use them together, I had forgotten half the PHP from the first chapters! This book has you writing scripts using PHP AND MySQL in chapter two. but you don't feel rushed.
Let me close in describing who I think this book is good for, and who it isn't. If you are three days away from a test in these two subjects, and just need to cram to pass the class and don't care about learning, just passing, then get another book. There are books out there that have specific areas dedicated to each term (variable, array, etc) summed up on two pages. Once you learn something in this book, you will keep using it throughout the book, which is very helpful. I personally have to do things myself, more than once, to pick them up, and this book covers that perfectly, without making one second of this book boring.
If you are looking for a specific PHP and MySQL reference to sit on your desk, and quickly look in the index, find a term, and use it, get another book. As the authors state, this is not a reference book. It is meant to be a learners book, read in sequence.
If you know some HTML and CSS (didn't seem to me like you even had to know very much), are completely new to PHP and programming in general, and want to learn in a way that allows you to retain what knowledge you pick up, BUY THIS BOOK! It is excellent. All the examples do a wonderful job of illustrating what you just went over in that chapter. Both writers are truly gifted, and have an excellent writing style. The layout is perfect. I can't shower enough praise on this book. Brand new beginners to intermediate level programmers will all benefit from this book. Two thumbs way up!
28 of 29 found the following review helpful:
 Maybe I'm spoiledFeb 24, 2010
By Jason Semko
"Jason"
PHP is a difficult subject matter. These guys do a pretty good job of helping you understand and get the concept. Good beginner book. However, there are some problems. As stated in some of the other negative reviews, there is a lot of ambiguous text throughout the book where 'solutions' are given but no instruction is given on what to do. Occasionally there are parts where you are told "Now start coding!" with a few things left out. For example: In Chapter 9 you are told to create your first function out of already existing code. However, at some points of the lesson there is no instruction given on how to apply the 'return' statements of that function. Sure, if you're very focused you can figure it out, but when you put full trust into this book, you're constantly asking yourself "Am I supposed to do this? Is this part of the lesson? Will I turn the page and will it say 'Hey the page didn't work right? Here's why!'"
The learning format is a bit disorganized because the book is supposed to be 'rebellious' and 'fun' to read. But the constant placement of 'help comments' all over the page keeps your eyes bouncing on every page.
I've reported a few errors and for all those who do choose to buy this book...FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, ENABLE PHP ERRORS so you can catch theirs! (Not a lot, but hair-pulling errors)
Bottom Line: You WILL learn PHP
Bottom Bottom Line: You will at times STRESS learning PHP because of the book.
30 of 34 found the following review helpful:
Heads First PHP & MySQL is the way to get started!Jan 29, 2009
By Bob Reselman
I've been a big fan of the Heads First series for a long time. The format of the Head First books is unique, engaging and effective. One could consider the Head First series to be comic book like. This is one of the series' great virtues. The interactive layout and thoughtful way illustrations are integrated to text in order to explain 'hard to get concepts' really works.
I use the series to learn and teach advanced programming topics. All the exciting things about the Heads First series shines through in PHP & MySQL.
Heads First PHP & MySQL is for beginners. There is little prerequisite knowledge required to get benefit from the book. I have learned from years of teaching and mentoring that beginners learn best when presented with information in a way that is fun and hands on. Heads First PHP & MySQL meets this requirement with no problem.
The book covers the range of topics that is standard for having a good foundation in programming in general and programming in PHP in particular. After finishing this book the reader will be able to create a data driven web site in PHP, leveraging that special relationship between the PHP programming language and the MySQL database. The reader will know why and how PHP and MySQL go hand in hand.
The book throws in some extra tidbits. For example it teaches you how to make a data drive Rss Feed. It's a good example that has real world bearing.
Again, this is a beginners book. I caution 'bosses' that while giving this book to aspiring PHP developers is a good thing to do, you should not think that the book will create production ready coders. Coding in a production environment requires experience that is beyond the scope of this work.
This being said, I look forward to reading an follow up volume to this work titled, Heads First Really Programming in PHP and MySQL in which the topics of object oriented programming in PHP and implementing the basic software design patterns are explained in a way that only a Heads First book could.
Heads First PHP and MySQL is a great beginners book, one that should be on the bookshelf of every up and coming PHP developer.
37 of 46 found the following review helpful:
 unacceptableOct 14, 2009
By Joel Messerschmidt
"Student of Life Long Learning"
The reason I bought this book was because I breezed through the Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML in less than a week and found it to be a superb tutorial. I soon found out that NOT ALL HEAD FIRST BOOKS ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL however. Head First PHP & MySQL has a horrible format for training someone. You're reading along and it's telling you about various concepts and you're thinking ok, am I supposed to code this now? But instead of spelling out exactly how the code should be written in PHP they never get that detailed. They just keep using hypothetical labels, as if you're having a conversation with someone who has no intention of actually making such a page. Then after covering about 5 new concepts they finally tell you to stop and create a page that displays this, moves that, inputs this, calculates that (as if you've been doing this long enough to already know all the details by memory). Even if you do manage to piece together what they want you to do, it always has errors because they intend for it to be that way! After agonizing for hours about what I could have done wrong, I finally just gave up and decided to read past it where I encountered "So... such and such didn't work right? Here's what you need to do to fix it," followed by "better, but we still need to change blah blah blah for it to work," followed by "we're getting there, but you should have done blah blah blah," each time telling you to upload the page and test it out again. You may get some general concepts or techniques out of just reading through the book, but don't expect to be able to follow along and get any real hands-on experience.
10 of 11 found the following review helpful:
 Omits crucial details, poorly writtenAug 23, 2010
By Kevin D. Peterson
I bought this book for my wife, a print graphic designer trying to move into web design. She's found it confusing. When she asks me for clarification, it's clear that the authors never really tried out the book on a non-engineer.
1. The first example throws a mailto: link in a web page. My wife wasted an hour configuring her desktop email client (she normally uses gmail) before turning to the next page to see "haha, that's not actually related to anything we want to do".
2. The next example is sending email from a server. This would have been a great example ten years ago, when you could actually get mail out from a random machine without it being discarded as spam.
3. SQL statements are displayed without semi-colons. It's mentioned once, but this book is supposed to be for beginners.
4. The first example of SQL is vulnerable to SQL injection. Fine, it's the first example, but at least say it isn't suitable for production code.
5. Later on, they talk about SQL injection, but the solution they give is to remove unsafe characters, rather than the preferred method of parameterized queries.
These are a handful of specific problems I've seen. I'm sure there are more. In general, it's mostly written to the level of a beginner (which I wanted), but it has too many errors in the details for a beginner to actually follow along.
Also, the examples have the longest names I've ever seen. I don't see what the reader is going to gain by being forced to type "date_this_happened_on" repeatedly.
See all 53 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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