There are many great books on PHP, but by far the one I have found most
useful is "PHP Functions - Essential Reference" by Zak Greant, Graeme
Merrall, Torben Wilson, and Brett Michlitsch published by New Riders. Though
not exactly a book for learning PHP, it is excellent for looking up and
learning new functions for any project. Some functions didn't make the print
for some reason, but they can be found on the php.net website anyway--which
is another priceless resource.

One of the coolest php books I've found (though it might drive newbies a
little crazy) is "Professional PHP4 Multimedia Programming" published by
Wrox. It gives a good PHP refresher before diving off the deep end into
multimedia programming (eg GD, ImageMagick, PDFlib, etc). I bought this as
as a novice programmmer and am still intimidated by its presence two years
later. :) But it has definitely come in handy for working with PDFlib and
ImageMagick in a few of my past projects.

As far as general PHP books... there are dozens of great ones. I haven't
found many that have sucked. Most of them have good points that others
missed. Get a few and learn from each's strengths. Good luck.

"Huy" <dshadower@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:d94a7ee2.0410181000.5744664d@posting.google.c om...
> Generic PHP newbie question here. May anyone please recommend books
> that have gotten you started on PHP (interfacing with MySQL is a plus)
> & also reference books? Just looking for some good quality books to
> purchase.