Average Customer Review:  
| Good Book Overall, With a Slight Problem | |
This book covers ALMOST of what is covered in Wrox's Beginning PHP4 and Professional PHP4 Programming. However, this book lacks reinforcements - no challenge activity or case study - so I suggest readers to create their own. DON'T jump on the next chapter without making sure you had your feel with the dirty coding OR making sure you REALLY know that you grasp an idea already. Also, just like other Mastering series, it will introduce you to A FEW ideas you shouldn't be introduced with in the beginning chapter. Otherwise, it would have been an organized book. Do I recommend it? Yes, and if you stumble on a problem with this book b/c it might have been misplaced in the organization, try to look for more info or mark it and get back to it coz' I'm sure you will see the answer later in the book.
| Yep, 5 stars from me, too. | |
This is a review of two books. I'm going to tell you why I bought Mastering PHP 4.1, and why I did not buy PHP Bible, 2nd edition.First, I have the PHP Bible 1st edition, and a bunch of other PHP books. But they're all outdated now. One thing that has changed dramatically in the PHP language is the use of forms. PHP used to turn a form field named "comment" into a variable called $comment. But then for a while, $HTTP_POST_VARS['comment'] was preferred. And now $_POST['comment'] is the best way to get that form field (I think, I'm not even sure, it has changed so much). So I go looking for books that can really walk me through all these changes, and teach me the newest, best way to handle forms. PHP Bible mentions $_POST, and if that's all you're looking for -- the newest additions to the language -- then the Bible is worth considering. It's the most current. But PHP Bible really skimmed over forms. It doesn't even have "forms" in the table of contents (well, it does mention processing GET and POST input, all grouped in Chapter 9, "Passing Information Between Pages"). But that chapter is doing so many other things, forms get shortchanged. So I look at Mastering PHP 4.1, and right in the table of contents is a chapter on forms. I go through the chapter, and it's really good, even mentioning all the new variables for forms. The weak spot is that some of their code examples still rely on "register globals" -- but then they followup with a section on why to keep "register globals" off and they show an example of how to rewrite one of the scripts. That's pretty close to exactly what I wanted: I know the old way but want to learn the new stuff; they showed the old way, then they showed the new stuff. But there's more, and this is what solidified my choice. I tried looking up how to handle file uploads, either by PUT or POST. I looked in the index of the PHP Bible for $HTTP_POST_FILES, looked under "forms" for anything close, looked under "files" for anything close, looked for the "is_uploaded_file" function. Nothing. I skimmed Chapter 9, and did find mention of this, but pretty minimal. Then I looked to Mastering PHP 4.1. In the index under "forms" I see "uploading files" and turn to a page that has a nice walkthough with code. It also has a half-page discussion of some things you can do to secure the PHP code that handles file-uploading. While I'm reading this, I realize that any place there is some HTML in an example, it's actually XHTML compliant. Nice. I decide to buy Mastering PHP 4.1. I give PHP Bible 3 stars because a lot of the good stuff from the 1st edition is still there, and if you don't have specific needs, it's an OK book to use to learn PHP programming. But I give Mastering PHP 4.1 5 stars, even though it's a few months older, because it has a lot of the new info in a well-laid out format with a good index, good Table of Contents, and more well-developed content.
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