PHP Books - A poll of sorts

Evening all! (at least it is evening here in Texas)

We all have our favorite PHP books and resources but there is one tome
that seems to be missing from the group...a "best practices" book. We
all have our preferences for what we call best practices and it seems at
this stage in the life of PHP that there would be a guide to the best of
the best.

I am not talking about the holy wars here (like bracket placement) I am
talking about things like testing variable in conditional situations or
the proper use of constructors or ways to leverage the power of PHP with
databases.

If there was a best practices book would you buy it? (I am showing
complete disregard for the thread on copyright infringement v. theft.)
Or do you rely on other sources like this list, articles, etc to derive
your own set of practices? Thanks for indulging me.

Thanks

Jay

The vast majority of my work these days is done using the Drupal CMS, which
has its own coding standards and best practices and conventions that are
(IMO) pretty darned good. I've adopted most of it in my non-Drupal work,
too, for simplicity.

So um, maybe, but I probably wouldn't jump at it as I feel I'm already
using "good enough practices".

On Sunday 12 August 2007, Jay Blanchard wrote:
> Evening all! (at least it is evening here in Texas)
>
> We all have our favorite PHP books and resources but there is one tome
> that seems to be missing from the group...a "best practices" book. We
> all have our preferences for what we call best practices and it seems at
> this stage in the life of PHP that there would be a guide to the best of
> the best.
>
> I am not talking about the holy wars here (like bracket placement) I am
> talking about things like testing variable in conditional situations or
> the proper use of constructors or ways to leverage the power of PHP with
> databases.
>
> If there was a best practices book would you buy it? (I am showing
> complete disregard for the thread on copyright infringement v. theft.)
> Or do you rely on other sources like this list, articles, etc to derive
> your own set of practices? Thanks for indulging me.
>
> Thanks
>
> Jay


--
Larry Garfield AIM: LOLG42
larry@garfieldtech.com ICQ: 6817012

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of
exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea,
which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to
himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession
of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it." -- Thomas
Jefferson

Jay Blanchard wrote:

> Evening all! (at least it is evening here in Texas)
>
> We all have our favorite PHP books and resources but there is one tome
> that seems to be missing from the group...a "best practices" book. We
> all have our preferences for what we call best practices and it seems at
> this stage in the life of PHP that there would be a guide to the best of
> the best.
>
> I am not talking about the holy wars here (like bracket placement) I am
> talking about things like testing variable in conditional situations or
> the proper use of constructors or ways to leverage the power of PHP with
> databases.
>
> If there was a best practices book would you buy it? (I am showing
> complete disregard for the thread on copyright infringement v. theft.)
> Or do you rely on other sources like this list, articles, etc to derive
> your own set of practices? Thanks for indulging me.
>
> Thanks
>
> Jay
>

I would buy it. But, I buy tons of books.

Janet


--
Janet Valade -- janet.valade.com

> Evening all! (at least it is evening here in Texas)

If you are in Texas, shouldn't that be evenin' y'all?

> We all have our favorite PHP books and resources but there is one tome
> that seems to be missing from the group...a "best practices" book. We
> all have our preferences for what we call best practices and it seems at
> this stage in the life of PHP that there would be a guide to the best of
> the best.

If I bought a book, it would have to be computer readable, well indexed, and
have a good search engine. I am fairly new to PHP and the biggest problem I have
in getting answers is knowing what question to ask, knowing where to look in the
manual. It is hard to learn what function does a particular task if you don't
already know what it is called!

Currently, the included PHP manual and these groups have served my needs. I pick
up "best practices" by copying/studying the examples.
--
Crash
Running: Windows 2000 Pro - Apache 2.2.4 - PHP 5.2.1 - PERL 5.8.8

Jay Blanchard wrote:
> If there was a best practices book would you buy it?

I write books on PHP aimed at the beginner/intermediate level, and have
a considerable collection of PHP books written by others. Two relatively
recent books that struck me as being important are "Pro PHP Security" by
Chris Snyder and Michael Southwell, and "Essential PHP Security" by
Chris Shiflett. (I know there's also "php|architect's Guide to PHP
Security" by Ilia Ashanetsky and Rasmus Lerdorf, but I haven't read it.)

The thing that struck me most about the books was that anyone thought
there should be a need for them. Of course, there is a need - that's why
they were written. However, surely security should be taught from the
very beginning? Every book on PHP (or any other language) should be a
"best practices" book.

The problem is that books are written by human beings, who are prone to
mistakes (myself included), and whose own view of "best practice" might
leave gaps in security. The other problem is that a lot of people who
use PHP just want to copy and paste a script that "works". Even if the
ready-made script has been designed with security in mind, using it
without understanding *how* it works can lead to unforeseen problems.

By the way, I would welcome constructive criticism of the scripts in my
books. I have tried to incorporate what I perceive to be the best
practices at the time of writing, but I'm sure there's room for improvement.

--
David Powers

> We all have our favorite PHP books and resources but there is one tome
> that seems to be missing from the group...a "best practices" book. We

PHP, being server-side, is not difficult. I think the client-side stuff
deserves some books (DOM, Javascript, CSS, XHTML, XML, ....) if you want
to save time.

--
@~@ Might, Courage, Vision, SINCERITY.
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you!
/( _ )\ (Xubuntu 7.04) Linux 2.6.22.2
^ ^ 19:44:01 up 5 days 6:30 0 users load average: 0.05 0.06 0.02
news://news.3home.net news://news.hkpcug.org news://news.newsgroup.com.hk

On Aug 15, 2007, at 4:28 AM, David Powers wrote:

> Jay Blanchard wrote:
>> If there was a best practices book would you buy it?
>
> I write books on PHP aimed at the beginner/intermediate level, and
> have a considerable collection of PHP books written by others. Two
> relatively recent books that struck me as being important are "Pro PHP
> Security" by Chris Snyder and Michael Southwell, and "Essential PHP
> Security" by Chris Shiflett. (I know there's also "php|architect's
> Guide to PHP Security" by Ilia Ashanetsky and Rasmus Lerdorf, but I
> haven't read it.)
>
> The thing that struck me most about the books was that anyone thought
> there should be a need for them. Of course, there is a need - that's
> why they were written. However, surely security should be taught from
> the very beginning? Every book on PHP (or any other language) should
> be a "best practices" book.
>
> The problem is that books are written by human beings, who are prone
> to mistakes (myself included), and whose own view of "best practice"
> might leave gaps in security. The other problem is that a lot of
> people who use PHP just want to copy and paste a script that "works".
> Even if the ready-made script has been designed with security in mind,
> using it without understanding *how* it works can lead to unforeseen
> problems.
>
> By the way, I would welcome constructive criticism of the scripts in
> my books. I have tried to incorporate what I perceive to be the best
> practices at the time of writing, but I'm sure there's room for
> improvement.
>
>
If I can add some stuff here;
I have done a lot of php/javascript programming from scratch and being
self taught, without
good texts on the subject in addition to the php manual, I would be at
a loss. Copying and
pasting code is kind of like being a commercial designer who never does
original art but
just use stock stuff and crams it into templates. That should be the
difference between
a pro developer and 'paste up' artist. Inevitably, even copied and
pasted code has to be
adapted for a particular use, other wise it boarders on theft. Even if
you do use open source
you do not have to be a charity (albeit, I have not made any money at
it to speak of).
I would like to think that the money I have spent on books, lining
authors' and publishers
pockets, the money I have spent on commercial software from Adobe,
Quark, etc, etc,
and the thousands of dollars I have spent on computer hardware over the
years has not
been in vain (even though I have no ' meal ticket' with student loans
that may take the
rest of my life to pay off and won't ever be guaranteed that that
investment would pay
for itself).
Just my two cents.
Jeff K