Awseome
This book is everthing you need to know about PHP!
Very nice examples!
Needs Updating for PHP 5 / otherwise good.
This is one of the books I used starting in 2004 to learn PHP. I still find myself returning to it from time to time. There are easier books for the PHP newbie such as Larry Ullman's PHP for the WWW, but this book can work OK for a newbie. PHP Bible (2nd) is way too big to read cover to cover, but functions well as a refresher & reference. I believe it is a decent basic to intermediate level PHP book. It covers subjects with a good balance of direct information & good short examples, without being too verbose.
I find the official PHP manual difficult at times, with no other simple straight forward reference books available. That probably makes PHP Bible the best reference for a beginning to intermediate PHP programmer. Anyone who is truly an advanced PHP programmer will find this book too simplistic and rudimentary.
The biggest problem is that PHP5 has been out for about two years and PHP Bible has not been updated yet. If there was another good PHP reference around, I would rate PHP Bible 3 stars, but under the circumstances, it gets 4 stars.
I do not love this book, but it functions well, and makes a good investment for anyone serious about PHP.
Simply Great!
This book is simply GREAT!
All your doubts about PHP will disappear... it contains absolutely all that you want to know about PHP to make great applications related with your website.
One of the best things about this book is that you can start from ZERO. You don't have to be an expert computer engineer nor know anything about PHP, it is explained here from the most simple variable to the most complicated and advanced technique between PHP and MySQL.
It contains a lot of information (well, it's a big book... more that 1000 pages) and a lot of examples that are so simple that anyone could understand.
Also, this book talk about many other issues related with PHP, like Data Bases, XML, etc...
Buy it, I really recommend it for ANYONE...
A LITTLE WARNING:
If you want to use this great book, you have to know at least a little bit of HTML, because PHP is a language that improves HTML... If you don't know anything about HTML, you'll not love this book as much as I love it... so, I recommend that before you get this book, you study some HTML : )
Worked for me
I was very pleased when I received this book (and ,in general, am very happy with most of the "______ Bible" reference books).
As an experienced ASP, VBScript, PERL, etc... programmer, when I was appoached to write a site in PHP, I needed a book to get me up to speed in this language with the quickness.
Explains everything from deployment to security concerns in an easy to read fashion, covers all of the usual suspects (POST, GET, ODBC, fair amount of mySQL, etc...) and common PHP conventions/algorithms.
Comprehensive
This book has a wealth of information, even though its organization of the subjects leaves something to be desired. Some reviewers state it is good for beginners, I refute it. Except for a few chapters, the book is definitely not for beginners. There is so much information on so many pages that important concepts get lost amongst those which are less important. Possibly, the connotation of calling the book a Bible inspired the extensive subject coverage.
Reading this book, I often had the impression that examples had some details lacking, when partial scripts were given. It was impossible not to compare this book to Larry Ullman's PHP for the World Wide Web, which had its examples presented in the clearest possible way.
In spite of some comments detracting from the value of the book, it is comprehensive, and covers more subject areas than other PHP books. Between this book and the PHP Manual a student can make up his or her own examples, and learn that way. If I had more ambition I would, with the author's and the publisher's blessing, write an adjunct book with detailed and tested examples to complement this Bible. I find it difficult to decide whether I should rate it three or four stars. Knowing the monumental work it had taken to write this book, I give it four stars.
