| | |  | Computer Security | Home » » PHP Cookbook: Solutions and Examples for PHP Programmers | | | | | | | Product Promotions: | | | | | Description: | | 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.
| | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Adam Trachtenberg | | Paperback:
| 812 pages | | Publisher:
| O'Reilly Media | | Publication Date:
| August 01, 2006 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0596101015 | | Product Length:
| 9.1 inches | | Product Width:
| 7.0 inches | | Product Height:
| 1.8 inches | | Product Weight:
| 2.8 pounds | | Package Length:
| 9.1 inches | | Package Width:
| 7.0 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.7 inches | | Package Weight:
| 2.65 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 27 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 27 customer reviews )
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27 of 27 found the following review helpful:
 A reference every PHP programmer should haveJan 03, 2007
By Jason
This is my first O'Reilly book in the "Cookbook" series. At first I thought this book would probably contain the code and instructions for building a couple of web applications such as a shopping cart or a blog engine. This isn't that book. Rather it provides the reader with code snippets that can be used as building blocks for all kinds of applications. If I had to describe this book in one sentence I would say it is as if the author took down all the "Hmm..., I wonder how that is done?" questions and created an answer key.
One thing I like about this book is that the authors don't waste the first few chapters trying to teach or give an overview of the language. Instead they hop right into the usage of the language that relates to real world stuff.
So here is a brief overview. The book covers PHP 5 and goes over many of the new and improved features. The first six chapters provide recipes for more basic subjects (strings, numbers, dates & times, arrays, variables, and functions. Again, this isn't an intro to PHP, that is another book such as Programming PHP from O'Reilly. This is that book you reach for once you have moved from PHP basics and are ready to build some real world stuff.
By chapter seven the authors are discussing classes and objects. I like using classes when coding in C++, so this is a good chapter for those who like OOP. The next nine chapters go over web stuff starting out with basic things like cookies, forms, and databases. Then the authors go into more advanced areas like session management, XML, automation and web services (REST, SOAP, Mail, FTP, LDAP, and DNS to name a few).
The next chapter [17] is on the topic of graphics. This is a cool chapter if you like to create dynamic images. Things like creating a button image on the fly, or generating charts. Graphics are great to have a knowledge of because everyone likes graphical presentation of data and this chapter can help you get there.
Chapter 18 is on security and encryption which I found rather helpful. No one wants there web application to be the link that allows data to be compromised, and this chapter deals with many of those problem areas. Chapter 19 covers localization, chapter 20 is on debugging and testing. The debugging section does a great job of getting a person setup with the tools they need to properly debug an application including creating your own exception class. This is an outstanding chapter that every programmer can appreciate since every application needs debugging.
The remaining chapters cover performance tuning, regular expressions, files, directories, command line PHP, PERL and PECL. Being a Perl guy I found it interesting to see how the authors utilized regular expressions in PHP. And the chapter on command-line PHP was outstanding; I thought the recipe for creating a PHP command shell was pretty cool.
CONCLUSION
--
This book is like having the answer key to most of the random questions a person comes up with when writing code. I found this book to be very useful, it will be one of those references that I keep close, and gets very little shelf time. It is a solid book. It is hard to say what parts I liked best because this is one of those books that you like and must have, but then as time goes on and you use it more and more its value grows. This is an excellent book and I would strongly recommend it the PHP users that want to move to the next level.
6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
 PEAR DBDec 07, 2006
By A. D. Searle
This is basically an excellent book. A lot of very useful stuff. Unlike the online PHP manual, it is on this technology called a book. This comes in handy on say a NYC subway train, where you want to brush up on some PHP, or find the solution for something you are working on.
One major warning though: all the database stuff (about 20-30 percent of the book) depends on the PEAR DB class. That is a great thing to use as are many of the PEAR classes. But there is certainly great PHP code that doesn't rely on PEAR DB.
Besides the db stuff the book has great examples with strings, numbers, I/O (files and directories), dates, etc. And being that I used to be a Reptile Biologist - you got to love that Iguana. If nothing else, just buy it for the cover.
6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
Good referenceSep 01, 2006
By Andrew Violette
"A Customer"
(My review refers to the 2003 edition).
This book has loads of information about stuff you do on a normal basis with PHP, including XML parsing, form processing, string and array manipulation, etc. I think the book is well written and indexed with good examples, but I think you won't get much more information than the PHP user manual.
In my opinion PHP has better free user documentation than all the other languages I use on a regular basis (Java, Ruby and PERL). You can download their user manual and PEAR manual in a whole bunch of formats, including CHM, which gives you the ability to browse it like any other Windows help file (which gives you the ability to search). Most of the points in this book are covered in the same depth in the PHP user manual and you don't have to pay for it.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 Hit AND MissMar 26, 2010
By Darkness' Ally
"Vince"
I've owned this book for about 2 years, my PhP coding experience being intermediate both before AND after reading it. It is by no means a lesson book, as implied by another person's review, but instead follows the term "cookbook" very well. A quick explanation of my review's title: "Hit AND Miss". It's mostly "hit" but there are a few aspects that left me feeling as though I was lacking in level of knowledge, something also expressed in another person's review, concerning the book's contents.
For one, for up to intermediate small issues it definitely hits the mark. The code snippets are (mostly) well-commented or explained in the surrounding paragraphs, as well as (from what I can tell) easy on server load. Some are (of course) more processor-intense than others, but that's the nature of any programming/scripting language: some stuff's simple and quick and other stuff is just downright tedious to type-out and (possibly) can become a thorn in the Server's side (forgive my pun).
The book's Problem-into-Solution format is very easy to follow, almost identical to a Q&A format. The table of contents in the book alone is far more extensive than I would ever expect from a book of this size, and it is definitely a wealth of knowledge, technique and guidelines up to a certain point.
If I had to pick one thing to complain about it would have to be some of the solutions themselves. My other complaints are nothing compared to this one. The following is based on my own personal preference and server settings/extensions, so if you have PEAR and like using it (most people do, it seems), then disregard the following.
A bunch of solutions are explained using PEAR. It's been so long since I've read up on PEAR that I've no clue of what it stands for or even if you have to install it a certain way. Be that as it may, I choose not to use frameworks of any kind most of the time. PEAR is at the top of my "do not use" list. I've seen what it can do, and I think it's great, but I want to get my hands dirty, and PEAR can really take that away. Back to it: the PEAR-based solutions more often than not come with no alternative solution. There is one I remember concerning pagination where it gives the pure-PEAR way and an alternative. However the alternative involves other PEAR extensions. The alternative is an alternative to only PEAR's "DB_Pager" class, and not a full alternative. One would need to know what the PEAR was doing (have PEAR) and alter the code to keep it PEAR-free if one were in my shoes. I've since been able to adapt it, it wasn't hard. But there are beginners out there who have poor skills at transposing (correct word?) code from classes or frameworks into something completely customized. When I started out it was the OREILLY PHP Cookbook and the OREILLY Learning PHP & MySQL books I started with, along with some guitar books for learning Christmas songs (I know, unrelated, same box though :P).
All-in-all the book is worth the price. The pros outweigh the cons almost 3 to 1. I still use this book to refresh my memory of techniques long since forgotten or fuzzy, even 2 years after I've purchased more advanced books that cover most of the same things in greater detail and moulded for greater scale. PHP as many know is very unforgiving when it comes to screw-ups, and the little things that you forget can make or break a script. I'll be keeping this book for years and years to come to dust off and refresh my memory. My website is still lacking, but heck, it's a personal website, and wouldn't be nearly as good (??? :P) as it is now without the "cookbook".
6 of 7 found the following review helpful:
...but if you want PHP 5, this is the book!Nov 18, 2006
By Rob Wehrli
There is no comparison between Wrox and O'Reilly books! O'Reilly wins hands-down!
This 2nd edition of the PHP Cookbook offers real, useful, insightful information. The content is not "just recipes," but a consise approach to everyday problem solving using PHP. The organization of the book exposes this problem solving as a series of recipes that answer particular problem-domain questions. The diversity of the problem-domains accounted for in this text are amazing! If it is web or Internet related, this book probably has an answer for your most demanding PHP needs.
In the fine tradition of O'Reilly books, this text is very well presented, exceptionally well edited and organized in a manner that makes sense to the reader. It is not filled with fluff or hyperbole designed to add page count the way the thick volumes at Wrox seem to do. If you need every little thought spelled out for you, maybe you should buy a "PHP for Dummies" book. Otherwise, you can't go wrong with this excellent, well presented book that truly is "Solutions and Examples for PHP Programmers."
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