Zikula Community

• **unknown user**
  
  

  • Rank: Senior
  • Registered: Mar 16, 2002
  • Last visit: Oct 21, 2009
  • Posts: 2330

  Posted: Jul 05, 2005 - 07:58 AM

  My PHP book library is growing... Just thought to start a thread where others can post their own favorite titles. Warning: my Amazon affiliate ID is in these links, so if you prefer not to give a small credit, just visit Amazon (or wherever) and search the books manually.
  
  Advanced PHP Programming
  
  PHP Cookbook
  
  Build Your Own Datab…e Using PHP & MySQL
  
  Sams Teach Yourself PHP in 24 Hours
  
  PHP Certification Study Guide
  
  The Zend PHP Certifi…ified Engineer Exam
  
  I found the "Sam's" title to be the best starter for general PHP, and the "Build Your Own" title to be an easy to follow text (though the book is falling apart way faster than is "quality" IMHO.)

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• **unknown user**
  
  

  • Rank: Registered User
  • Registered: Mar 16, 2002
  • Last visit: Oct 21, 2009
  • Posts: 22

  Posted: Jul 06, 2005 - 12:27 AM

  This is great. It's always hard to distinguish between which books are rehashes of the help file and which are actually helpful. Thank you for the links, I was happy to contibute lol.

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• **unknown user**
  
  

  • Rank: Freshman
  • Registered: Mar 16, 2002
  • Last visit: Oct 21, 2009
  • Posts: 71

  Posted: Jul 06, 2005 - 06:08 AM

  Hi John, interesting topic!
  I followed a couple of your links and found an interesting review of the 'Build Your Own...' book, which in part states:
  
  "But the book has some technical flaws that other beginning PHP books do not. An example is the authors use of SQL, a primary feature of this type of book, which is implemented using string concatenation. This type of SQL is not only inefficient, it's also prone to SQL injection attacks which means that any code based on this book will have serious security issues."
  Reviewer: Jack D. Herrington "engineer and author" (Silicon Valley, CA)
  
  I don't do PHP or SQL (yet), so I thought I'd bring this up for discussion.

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• **unknown user**
  
  

  • Rank: Senior
  • Registered: Mar 16, 2002
  • Last visit: Oct 21, 2009
  • Posts: 2243

  Posted: Jul 06, 2005 - 07:42 AM

  I've enjoyed what I've read of Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL E-Commerce: From Novice to Professional quite a lot so far. It's not so very much SQL, but it does have lots of Smarty, which is quite handy. It also advocates a great design strategy - three tiered architecture. I'm actually looking forward to modifying the site - it's very easy to change one part without worrying about the rest of the design. It's probably not the best book for a PHP newbie, but for an low-intermediate PHP programmer (like me) it's pretty doable.
  
  Frank

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• **unknown user**
  
  

  • Rank: Senior
  • Registered: Mar 16, 2002
  • Last visit: Oct 21, 2009
  • Posts: 2330

  Posted: Jul 06, 2005 - 07:07 PM

  jonasy - You're welcome. I started out with HTML and some CSS knowledge when I came to find PN, but through the use of a handful of books, plenty of forum-reading, and of course some trial and error here and there, I've been able to learn a great deal about PHP. I'd also like to mention w3schools.com where there's a wealth of free information for the taking. And I can't forget theSitePoint Forums where there are TONS of helpful people who genuinely seem to enjoy helping a guy (or girl!) in need.
  
  Thanks for the comments guys!
  
  Testing123 - Unfortunately, I've yet to read any books that don't have at least some errors. I've found that many books have good and bad about them. It's fine to program your SQL (rather MySQL in this case) with concatenated strings so long as you clean any data before using it (especially when it's coming from users.) In fact, many PostNuke SQL queries are made up of concatenated strings and it seems to be working out pretty well. ;) If it was such a terrible technique, then all our sites would be hacked by now. The bottom line is to clean every piece of data before using it. PN has a "cleaning" function: pnVarCleanFromInput(), pnStripslashes(), pnVarPrepForStore, and there are also general PHP functions such as strip_tags(), addslashes(), htmlspecialentities(), escapeshellcmd(), mysql_escape_string() to help you ensure data's integrity before using it. The poster of the comment you mention has a valid point and it's important to remember that when accepting data from users, you should always approach the situation as though EVERY user is malicious, trusting no one. I'd also like to point out that I've not found any single book (aside of the PHP manual) that covers every aspect of PHP, security, best practices, etc. in one, do-able volume...unfortunately, this is beyond the scope of a newbie book IMHO. Perhaps the most valuable lesson I've learned is this: "When in doubt, ask others for help. Many programmers will happily tell you when you're wrong, or when they have a better way...especially at sitepoint.com!" ;) And finally, unless it's the PHP manual, don't go into a book expecting to learn everything...read, learn, and then search out more information...always. I've been taking PHP classes through Zend.com for awhile now, and I will say that no book comes close to actual explained information where you can ask questions...but using the books (and sites) I've mentioned, one can come quite a long way, and relatively cheaply.
  
  Frank - I was slated to start "Migrating to PHP5" class at phpArchitect.com (through Zend.com) tomorrow...but class was cancelled! DOH! I'm excited to get started with it though as my host is allowing PHP5 as an option now. I've seen mention of that same book you pointed out and it's on my list of books to get. Thanks for the reminder! I know what you mean about the book not being particularly for newbies; unfortunately, this is the norm I suppose since PHP really is a huge "thing." That said, the "Advanced PHP Programming" title I mentioned above (as the title implies) is also not for brand-newbies.

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