Recommended Books

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.

"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.

I've used the Sams "Teach Yourself in 24 Hours" series to get myself started
on pretty much every computer language I work with right now. Go to
samspublishing.com and look up Teach Yourself PHP in 24 Hours and Teach
Yourself MySQL in 24 Hours.

PHP For the World Wide Web (Visual Quickstart Guide) is the best one I
have seen, Larry Ullman is the author and does a beautiful job of
explaining things.

He has a beginner and advanced version and both are wonderful. He
explains everything and shows the code for all of his examples, also a
lot of his examples are downloadable off of his website.

He also goes over interfacing with MySQL in both versions of his
books....

> PHP For the World Wide Web (Visual Quickstart Guide) is the best one I
> have seen, Larry Ullman is the author and does a beautiful job of
> explaining things.

I'll second that. I have Larry Ullman's "PHP &MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites"
and have been very impressed by it.

Here it is at amazon: <http://tinyurl.com/5lbrz> where it gets 4.5 stars
from 35 reviewers. And the price is right too!

Bongoman

On 18 Oct 2004 21:05:55 -0700, john.postlethwait@gmail.com in comp.lang.php wrote:
>PHP For the World Wide Web (Visual Quickstart Guide) is the best one I
>have seen, Larry Ullman is the author and does a beautiful job of
>explaining things.

>He has a beginner and advanced version and both are wonderful. He
>explains everything and shows the code for all of his examples, also a
>lot of his examples are downloadable off of his website.

>He also goes over interfacing with MySQL in both versions of his
>books....

I concur with this, for the beginner Larry's books are the best I've
seen. Most other books assume one has some programming knowledge, which
isn't the best way for novices to start IMHO.

--
marathon
A Riverside, California, health ordinance states that two persons may
not kiss each other without first wiping their lips with carbolized rosewater.

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.