PHP 5 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach [Format Kindle]

I am a big fan of 'recipe' books. They collect solutions to a variety of common problems into a single volume for easy reference, often times pointing out features in an extensive language environment that were missed when first learned. This book is no exception.

I had been coding PHP for close to a year when I picked up this book. I found most of the coding and examples to be fairly familiar, but forcing myself to read through ever page I have expanded my coding with several standard functions that I had no use for when first learning the language (and thus had forgotten about).

The writing style is very readable, and the code is targeted at the beginning to intermediate PHP coder. Beginners to PHP will benefit from reading through the entire book; those with more experience are better off skimming the first half of the book and reading the latter sections. The topics covered are fairly complete and include: arrays, strings, imaging, database, files and web forms. I would have liked a more detailed coverage of XML and SOAP, but the basics are provided for these technologies.

If you are an experienced PHP coder you may gain something from this book (like I did), but you would probably get just as much by browsing the official PHP site's function list to refresh your memory of what is available.

My recommendation, for PHP beginners, is that this book coupled with Jason Gilmore's Beginning PHP and MySQL makes an excellent pair to learn PHP and should have you up to speed in no time. Add Matt Zandstra's PHP 5 Objects, Patterns, and Practice and you have a fairly complete PHP library suitable for an experienced programmer's reference shelf.

P-)

With all the books being published recently about PHP a new one will need to find and fill a niche to distinguish itself. "PHP 5 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach", published by Apress, has done so, in my view. This is an intermediate-level volume exploring PHP 5 using a "recipe" approach where the basics of PHP 5's functionality are expressed systematically but in a "small-topic" by "small-topic" manner. Cookbook style, each topic is relatively autonomous and can be individually selected, as necessary, for information or review, similarly to how many refer to the "Joy of Cooking" for help on a cooking project. It's a source for instant solutions to common PHP-related problems. There are over 200 such recipes presented.

Each of these "recipes" refers to a small element or aspect of PHP 5 and the presentations contain a brief overview of the topic, an explanation of how the code elements work, and where the code is applicable in projects. Overall, the book covers the whole range of PHP 5 functionality where each major element of PHP 5 is addressed in a recipe explaining and illuminating relevant code elements. You can easily get information about a specific PHP 5 element by going directly to the section of the book where it appears. Even better, the code snippets are designed to allow one to copy and paste them into your own applications or development easily and then to configure them as necessary. All of the code snippets are freely available for downloading at the publisher's website at [...].

There are 16 chapters and an index covering a total of 646 pages. The chapters are organized similarly to other PHP primers, covering the basic elements of PHP - data types, operations, arrays, strings, variables, files and directories, dates and times, functions, and regular expressions. The coverage for much of these concepts is relatively mundane and unoriginal. The discussion of dynamic imaging, however, is an exception. The writing throughout, however, is solid and clear. The book emphasizes the most important elements of new PHP 5. The object-oriented programming elements especially are covered - classes, objects, protected class variables, exception handling, interfaces, and the new mysqli database extension. The authors' discussions focus on PHP 5.0.4, MySQL 4.1, and cover Linux and Windows environments.

The book is directed at PHP programmers looking to learn the elements introduced by PHP 5, and for those looking to find fast solutions to coding problems. It assumes a basic knowledge of PHP. Many of the recipes discuss object-oriented programming and these are some of the more advanced sections of the book. I can say that Chapter 2, which introduces the object-oriented concepts is one of the better explanations of the topic that I've read. The chapter covers constructors, destructors, methods and properties, class diagrams and examples of these concepts at work in code snippets. There are a number of interesting segments containing custom coding of classes as reusable templates from which to create "objects".

The book is well-designed and written. The discussion is clear and logical. The code snippets are well-explained. The authors are experienced programmers and developers, and Good and Stephens have authored or co-authored a number of technical books.

A large handful of the recipes contain "projects", usually appearing at the end of the overview and presentation of code snippets covering the basics of the topics. The projects usually deal with the creation of higher-end classes and objects as solutions to common coding problems. The idea here is to show PHP 5 functionality at work providing useful code sections to be dropped into your custom applications. Chapter Five concludes with a sophisticated class dealing with dates and times issues. Other chapters contain constructions of string, file, graphics, and regular expression classes.

The last five chapters deal with using the PHP code in web applications and services. This material covers cookies (including construction of a cookie class), using HTTP headers, sessions, and using query strings. Much of this material has been covered elsewhere in the many primers on PHP already published. There is a chapter on using forms and an interesting chapter on working with markup. The better chapters are on using DOM to generate markup, parsing XML, using RSS feeds, SOAP, and simple XML. The chapter on mysql is basic, except for the section on creating a "wrapper" class. The last chapter deals with communicating with Internet services, like POP, iMap, and FTP. Another project presented here is one creating object-oriented code dealing with a mail class.

This is a useful book to have in a programmer's library.

I have to admit that I really enjoy having a good recipe style book in my library whenever possible and this is a good PHP 5 recipe book. The advantage of these books is simple. You find the problem you need resolved and you follow the recipe to resolve it. This problem-solution approach is very efficient and just what you need when you just want a quick answer. With over 200 recipes it focuses on new features of PHP 5 and taking advantage of the most popular PHP extensions. Some of the areas covered include arrays, dates and times, strings, files, regular expressions, web basics, forms, markup, and MySQL. For each area the authors include various problems that are commonly encountered or that can be resolved more efficiently with the new features, the code snippet to resolve the problem, and then an in depth analysis of the code and how it works. For the PHP 5 programmer this is a valuable reference that they will be sure to be reach for often when dealing with new programming challenges. PHP 5 Recipes is highly recommended.