Product Description
This book covers the basics of PHP and MySQL along with introductions to advanced topics including object-oriented programming and how to build Web sites that incorporate authentication and security. After you complete this course, you will be able to use PHP and MySQL to build professional quality, database-driven Web sites…. More >>
This was one of the assigned books for a class of mine, but I quite liked it. As a teacher and a programmer of ~25 yrs, I like a book that I can not only read from front to back, but one in which I can easily ‘look things up’, since I often know how to do something in another language but want to see how it is done with this tool.
This book is clear and concise and fills both needs. I liked the fact that it talks not only about the languages PHP and MySQL, but also how to get started with them (installation, configuration, and use with HTML). This book, along with the XAMPP/PHP/MySQL toolset made learning very easy and immediate.
One suggestion I’d make, however, would be for the book to include the XAMPP/PDT-all-in-one eclipse/Zend Debugger toolchain. Particularly on Windows, this allows the student to do open-source-package command-line debugging that is painless and accurate. Once I figured out how to use these tools, creating and debugging the book examples was ‘a breeze’. It could have saved a lot of time for DG to include this industry-standard toolset. Kudos to Gosselin, though, for a great book… jps
Rating: 4 / 5
To put this into the proper context, I am by no means an expert programmer but I do have an associate and bachelors degree in computer science from a regionally accredited university and am currently pursuing an MBA for Technology Management. With that said, I must say that this book is riddled with errors (syntax, logic, and structural) that make “working” through the walk through examples frustrating at best. It has been around five years since I used PHP professionally and much has changed, however, in past endeavors I had a much better experience with the PHP and MySQL Web Development series published by SAMS. I had the unfortunate experience using the Gosselin offering as a college course text book and am highly disappointed. What I thought would have been a “refresher” course turned out to be a frustrating experience. I understand that college is all about self-guided study, however, I believe this book did more harm than good and I would have had more success using my 2001 book which is outdated. It would have been nice to simply have the university email me the assignments from the book and leave me to my own devices, rather than pay top dollar for something that is of bottom rung quality.
Rating: 1 / 5
Unless you are required to buy this book for a class, I would save the 75+ bucks. There is very little detailed information in here, and the most extensive sections are the exercises at the end of each chapter. There are many other books out there for a fraction of the price that will serve as reference volumes long after you’ve gotten everything you can possibly get out of this one (check out O’Reilly press). All of these “Course Technology” editions by Thompson/Cengage are so pretty to look at on your bookshelf, but so lacking in useful content. Good info for someone with little or no programming experience, but even then – just not worth the price. Unfortunately many of us college students are like sitting ducks to these publishers, easy targets for their marketing scams.
Rating: 2 / 5
It seems like a fairly thorough text on all the various aspects of PHP. How would one know, however, unless one studies another book along side? One major flaw which is very serious: there are typographical errors in coding examples AND explanatory texts. For a programming language that is an unacceptable feature. As a learner, one is dependent on the text being correct. Another pedagogical shortcoming is that some of the exercises ask the user to type in a block of code with mistakes in it. Then it asks the user to correct them. Personally I think that gives the user the opportunity to learn bad coding practice.
Rating: 2 / 5
This is a pretty good book to learn PHP and MySQL, but there are alot of errors. I had to get extra help in some areas just because the book had the wrong statements shown. It got very frustrating at those times. I basically had to proofread parts of the book for them. Other than that, it does give you a good basic background of PHP and MySQL.
Rating: 3 / 5