Good Introduction to PHP.
I have been looking for a good introductory book on PHP for quite sometime now. "Spring into PHP' does give a good foundation on the subject for beginners. The basic concepts such as, operators, stings, emails, and functions are all there. Most of the other PHP books I have seen go right to more advanced concepts without introducing the basics needed to complete more advanced tasks. "Spring into PHP" is a good book if you need to learn PHP fast, but don't expect to learn the finer details of PHP. This book is probably just designed to give you a basic understanding of the PHP so you can go into a PHP file and have an idea what is going on. Even though the book illustrates the basic concepts of PHP very effectively, I wish there were more real-world examples. The chapter on communicating with a database is fine in teaching the concepts of adding, deleting, and inserting information into a database. However, the examples given for manipulating information in the database are given right in the code. In the real world you would enter the database information into text boxes. Overall, I wish some of the samples in this book stressed more interactivity.
Still, this is a great book for beginners who have little or no experience with PHP. It is certainly a better introductory learning tool than those huge PHP manuals that can have up to 1000 pages, which is great for professionals to reference, but not for beginners to reference. For this reason, I believe "Spring into PHP" would be an effective text book for an introductory php class.
Watch out-typos Galore!
I'm new to PHP, and chose this book because I had good results with "Spring Into: HTML & CSS". The chunks are clear and concise with lots of examples. I've learned a lot from this book, but keep having trouble with errors in the script. After going over (and over) the code, I started realizing that it was typos in the book coding itself-not user error! Being new to PHP, constant typos make the learning process more drawn out and frustrating! I'm ready to get a different book so I don't have to struggle through the typos (at half way into the book, I've found over a dozen). There are some good things to get out of this book; but is it worth the frustration?
Hands Down
This book is amazing. Its so easy as a training guide and resource. I used a 3M highlighter with Tabs and continue to use this book as a reference. This book goes through Baby steps to configuring things to get you launched into your own PHP applications.
I've read the PHP 4 Bible which I would rate a 2. This book 'Spring Into PHP' is honestly the best PHP book I've purchased. My other recommendation is SitePoints PHP & MySQL book, though I would still choose this book for beginner to novice over any.
Comprehensive and wonderfully written!
I've been programming in c/c++ and java for 6 years now and recently at work was asked to give a facelift to our intranet site. Without this book I do not think I would have been able to complete all the requested task in such a short amount of time.
This is probably one of the most well written php books I've ever read. Steven Holzner did a perfect job bringing the nuts and bolts of PHP to the world in such a clear and concise manner. The books pace is perfect for a newbie into the PHP world and though technical is very easy to read and understand. Through this book I was able to give our intranet site an overhaul and add features to it in no time, leaving me plenty of time to focus on other projects.
If you need a quick jump start into PHP programming look no further.
Perfect for ADD
This is a great book for someone who understands some programming languages and wants a quick overview of what php can do, and how to do it. There are a lot of different subjects covered, but none in great detail. So if you have ADD like myself, this is the book for you! In my opinion it's a great deal too.
(10 reviews)
