Frustrating...
The problem with this book is that one example relies on examples from another chapter. Therefore, you have to pretty much read the entire 900 pages to get an example in the latter chapters to operate properly.An additional problem is the reference to downloading classes on websites that no longer exist.
If you already know XML parsing, then this book is fine, but then I guess you wouldn't need the book.
Good Book...
Wrox Press seem to have become masters at putting together volumes from a large number of authors. This 600-page volume is another example. This way of working does have some drawbacks, there is a little repetition of some basic stuff throughout the book, but not enough to truly detract from it. The book, after some expository material, details 11 projects of increasing complexity. They use PHP, MySQL, PEAR::DB, Smarty and PHPLib. The target audience, according to the book jacket, are programmers who already have a good knowledge of PHP, SQL Databases and XML. Frankly, I think they overdo the amount of experience you need to use and benefit from this book. If you are on top of all those topics well enough to consider yourself ˇ°professionalˇ± then this book may be too simple. If, on the other hand, you are, like me, conversant with PHP and SQL but would like to take yourself up to ˇ°professionalˇ± use of technologies like XML, templating and WAP enabling then this book will be good
excellent guide to using xml with php
I echo the praise already given in detail by the other reviewers here. This book gives an excellent detailed account of XML technology as well as the application of XML in combination with PHP. I was completely new to XML and found the text easy to follow and the concepts were easily applied by examining the example code. Please note that this is NOT a book for those new to PHP, it is for an experienced PHP programmer (in my opinion). It does give an overview of many aspects of PHP, but if you are brand new to PHP, I would recommend starting with a Beginning PHP text. Beginning PHP4 by Wrox is an excellent place to start. There are several others. If you're familiar with PHP, though, and looking to expand your skills or your project to include XML, this text is the place to look.
This book works!
If you want to learn how to use PHP and XML this is the book. I have several others but this is the one that shows you how to do it with real life code exammples.
Great book!
PHP itself is usually very straightforward and easy to understand, but throw in the world of XML and things can become overwhelming very quickly. DOM, RSS, SAX, XPath, XSLT, XSL, XML-RPC - wow! Professional PHP4 XML will answer the questions "What is XML?" and "How do I use XML within PHP?"The book starts off with a nice introduction to PHP, including the use of classes and file functions. It isn't meant to teach you everything you need to know about PHP, but to be refresher course for information that will be used throughout the book. It was nice to see the promotion of the new superglobal arrays in this section of the book.
Next, they jump into a chapter devoted to XML Fundamentals. This chapter explains the rules and syntax that a well-formed XML document must adhere to. DTDs and Schemas are discussed as methods to validate XML documents as well as define XML vocabularies. All in all, after reading this chapter you should have a good base to build upon for the rest of the book.
The rest of the book is devoted to giving you detail on the different derivatives of XML and how and when do use them with PHP. Topics covered include:
* SAX via PHP's Expat parser
* DOM
* XPath
* XSL via Sablotron
* Third party class for PHP such as XML File and phpXML
* RSS
* XML and databases
* SVG
* XML-RPC
One of the things I love about this book is that for each of these XML derivatives, they provide a detailed list of advantages and disadvantages. This enables you to determine which of these technologies is best suited for the application you are designing.
This book is an excellent resource for the beginner and advanced programmer alike. It is a mixture of a tutorial and reference book without comprising either. If you are serious about developing applications with PHP and XML, this book should be in your collection.
