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Head First PHP & MySQL |  | Authors: Lynn Beighley, Michael Morrison
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Category: Book
List Price: $44.99
Buy New: $27.85
as of 9/9/2010 07:49 PDT details
You Save: $17.14 (38%)
Seller: sakuragix
Rating:  35 reviews
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 816
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.4
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 8.1 x 1.8
ISBN: 0596006306
Dewey Decimal Number: 006.76
EAN: 9780596006303
Publication Date: December 22, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product 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.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 35
 Omits crucial details, poorly written August 23, 2010
Kevin D. Peterson (San Mateo, CA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
 A little less conversation, a little more action July 24, 2010
Riccardo Audano (Chiavari, Italy)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
That's what I would want from this book! It's definitely "over the top" in the fun department, even for a head first title, you can really see how the authors put some real talent and imagination to create the "case studies" for the code examples.. I just wish they had exercised the same level of talent and effort on the technical quality of the examples, which is unfortunately severely lacking, even for a beginner level text. There is way too little code, and the little that is present is way too simple and primitive. The end result is that this book reads like a very funny comic book with a little technical detail inside instead of what is really meant to be, a technical book with humour and creativity to make it more engaging. I think this has to do with the fact that both authors are more "creative types" than programmers at heart, so they naturally ended up concentrating on the side they care more about... overturning the rationale behind the head firts series. So.. a little less conversation, a little more action guys, or at least put as much action as conversation..
So if you're interested in checking out how much creativity and fun can be put into a programming book you might consider to give a look at this title, but for really learning to program in php, I would go somewhere else...
 So far I love it! July 19, 2010
Pinmouse
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I was skeptical about using this book because of the mixed reviews here. But I went ahead and got it anyway and I'm very glad I did! I'm only on chapter 3, but so far I feel like I've retained so much more in these first 100 pages (out of just over 750 pages in the book) than any of the other tutorials I've used! The style is very laid back, as if you were being taught by a friend (rather than some tech-geek). So far they have started with a fun little project about a guy whose dog was kidnapped by aliens and you are helping him track it down via a website we are building for him.
This is the first time I've ever given a review, but I felt compelled because I feel the book is just that good.
It might not be right for the seasoned pro, but that's obviously not who the book is targeted for. I myself am a graphic designer with ActionScript3 experience and have found the book to be great for someone of my level...
Hope that helps, enjoy! :)
Helped me to get my first job on oDesk July 16, 2010
David K. Friedman (Youngsville, NC)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This was a good book. After reading this book my second application on oDesk was accepted and I completed my first web development job earning 5 out of 5 stars in all areas for the work that I did.
It is probably better to do only a few chapters carefully (following their advice in bullet number 9 to "write a lot of code") than it is to rush through the book too fast. Chapters 1 through 6 could possibly be enough for many quick jobs or small sites. You'll need chapter 7 if you are interested in keeping track of users (it covers cookies, and also HTTP authentication). Chapter 8 has good rules and guidelines on how to organize your database to avoid inconsistencies and problems.
The other chapters are: chapter 9 covers custom and string functions, chapter 10 covers regular expressions, chapter 11 covers a graphics library, and chapter 12 covers web services and syndication.
These could possibly be skipped if the reader already has a reasonably good background in programming (e.g. has taken two or three courses at the undergraduate level in software development), or does not expect that that those are necessarily needed for the task at hand.
For example, a good programmer who has learned programming fundamentals may be able to pick up how to use the GD graphics library just from the documentation that comes with PHP.
You can always come back to those chapters at a later time (after all you've got to help Owen save his dog!)
I've only done one job, so I speak here mostly from that experience. I would grant that it is quite possible that those topics in chapters 9 through 12 may come in very handy, speed things up, and improve performance for other contract jobs, interviews, or full-time positions.
Just practicing and exploring things can help a lot as well.
Feel free to laugh at all the jokes, and be sure to do all the exercises. Some of the advice may sound a little bit silly or extraneous (for example, talk about the topic out loud, or drink a lot of water while you are studying), but I think they are reasonable tips and suggestions for helping to learn, and I think they helped me.
I also used [...] (entirely as an observer, just reading the kind of questions that people have can help), and of course the PHP.net site which has all the documentation.
It can take some time to figure out how to navigate the PHP.net site, but everything is there. You can click around and find what you need.
Before I took the oDesk exam I also got on Safari the book Programming PHP by Rasmus Lerdorf (the inventor of the language). That book goes into more depth. I read chapter 6 on classes to learn more details.
That review of chapter 6 in Programming PHP was helpful when I took the oDesk skills test which helped me to get my first job on oDesk.
Like all technical books there is some errata which has remained unfixed on Safari Books. If you see something that looks like a mistake and are using Safari Books you can click on Extras and then go to Errata. There is also a forum on [...] for people to ask questions on. You can see some of Michael Morrison's posts on there.
On oDesk many people said that it took them a few weeks to get their first job. On the second day of looking I found that an employer had written a specification, which I looked at and then began working on in PHP. I submitted my cover letter along with a URL to the work that I had done. I bid what the employer asked for which was about 20% of the average bid. While others had required a few weeks before getting their first job; with the training from Safari Books I got a job in about a day and a half. I built a customer relationship management web application frontend that worked with Zoho CRM.
One interesting comment about my job is related to chapter 8 and has to do with database normalization and having for each table a primary key. The job that I worked on had a 12 page specification and they had in the specification a schema but there was no primary key for the only table in the database. In the middle of the contract I asked graciously whether it was possible to add one column to the table so that there would be a primary key. After demonstrating that I could help with the task my employer (who is an engineer and scientist but not a web developer or database administrator) agreed readily. I think this was a good example of applying Dale Carnegie principles. If I had asked to make this change at the beginning before establishing more of a relationship, and demonstrating that I could help with the task, the employer might have still agreed, however, I think it would have been more awkward. I might have to try to explain why such a decision constitutes good design.
I enjoyed the book a great deal. It helped to lift up my spirits when I was depressed about being unsuccessful in graduate school.
Maybe it would have better to have delayed my review after gaining more experience trying to get a position in the conventional job market, or having done more freelance work on sites like elance, oDesk, or possibly TopCoder. However, I think as time goes by I'll see this book as being very useful.
I'm eager to read more Head First books, because I think the model is a very good one. For web development in particular I'm thinking about reading Head First JavaScript also by Michael Morrison. However, I may read some of the Head First Java book so that I can learn enough to start competing on TopCoder algorithm competitions.
I think Head First SQL (also by Lynn Beighley) may also be very useful for learning SQL in more detail toward the goal of gaining a MySQL certification.
David
P.S. You'll need of course a good editor or IDE to go through the book and for PHP/MySQL coding tasks. I was weaned on Emacs, but when doing the book, and the contract I used HTML-kit.
HTML-kit worked fine, and is a good program. On the other I'm thinking that Emacs might be better for different reasons:
1. Automatic indenting.
2. Matching parenthesis.
3. Incremental search (find might have some bug in HTML-kit)
Eclipse is probably now the most advanced IDE (possibly too sophisticated for the kinds of jobs I'd be working on in the near future).
How To Win Friends and Influence People
Programming PHP
Head First Java, 2nd Edition
Head First JavaScript
Head First SQL: Your Brain on SQL -- A Learner's Guide
Not one of the better head first books May 2, 2010
M. Lawrence (Mesa, AZ United States)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book shows much promise, but when it comes down to it you spend more time trying to figure out what the author failed to tell you you needed to do to get the examples to work. To make it even more difficult, the downloadable code does not include code for each of the checkpoints or "test drives" so you cannot always compare your code to a working version of what it should look like up to that point. And there are a lot of times where you will have to spend up to an hour on google trying to figure out what the hell you need to do to get something working where the author does not bother to give you a certain gem of info to help you along. Usually the author has you "download the code" and run it to see how it works. That defeats the purpose of learning how to do the code based on examples. To learn to code, you need to go through and type in the code, not just download and run the final product! There are several instances in ch 6 and 7 where the author leaves out steps for entire sections of code that are required to get the project to work, so you end up spending way too much digging through the final code to find what you need to get your mid chapter program to work. Also, the author does a lot of the HTML coding that is "deprecated" and goes against what is recommended in Head First's great book on HTML with CSS and XHTML. I don't expect to have to do a lot of banging my head against the wall to figure out what is going on in a Head First title, but that's what ended up happening.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 35
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