Preserved Topic: Bitdamaged book recommendation

Bitdamaged

In another thread you mentioned you got a book called "PHP/MySQL Database Applications", or something close to that. Is this a book you think you can recommend to someone who's skill level is intermediate at best. If you, or anyone else for that matter, has a book you can personally vouch for, I love it if you'd let me know what they are.

You guys have been talking about some great stuff in recent threads about database driven sites, and I want to get in on it.

Thanks for any help

I like the book because it takes a different angle on PHP. It basically goes through creating a couple of different apps. A guestbook, A content Management System, a Store etc.

I found it helpful because it goes over a bunch of things that tend to be overlooked. Things like setting up a normalized db. A couple of securtiy issues etc. When I was developing my own "e-commerce" site from scratch I found it really helpfull to incoroprate some of the ideas I got from this book. However there is the danger of becoming too dependant on someone else's code and not taking the time to learn what is actually happening. (Which is why I usually like to do everything from scratch as opposed to using other people's scripts) The funny thing was I had built a few of these apps for myself already and found the book more usefull by going back and comparing methodoligies (<-- I am sure I misspelled this).

Anyway I wouldn't use it as a book to learn PHP but it does help you take that next step.

I got it at Barnes and Nobles so if you can I'd try to find it and take a look at it in person if you can before buying it. I don't want to be responsible for you shelling out $40+ on a book that doesn't help at all It has gotten pretty good reviews at Amazon though.

hope this helps.




Walking the Earth like Kane

Appreciate the personal review Bitdamaged. I always read the reviews at Amazon, but don't trust most of them. Some of them are obviously out to make the book sound good (like one of the editors people wrote it maybe) and others are just as obviously out to trash it (author rejected by editor?). Unless a book I'm looking at has at least 50 or so reviews, and is still at 4 stars, I'd rather here it from one of you guys before I buy it.

Thanks

I already mentioned this in another thread, but I bought W.J. Gilmore's "A Programmer's Introduction to PHP 4.0" from APress. Combined with PHP's on-line documentation it is proving to be all I need. Basically it's a quick moving book that covers all the basics from language syntax all the way up through XML and Security issues. It seems to touch on all the important things, but doesn't get bogged down with details you won't remember anyway.

I guess the question you have to ask yourself is what are your strong points as a programmer. Personally I came into this game already having a good grasp on data structures (Java and C) and algorithms. The book was great because it covered all the things that I needed to know about PHP with good simple examples and didn't get into a lot of programming theory (a little here and there, e.g. explaining PHP's OOP shortcomings).

However, if you are looking at PHP as more of a vessel to learn programming in general, and need help more with your algorithms, then Bitdamaged's recommendation sound like it might be better.

It also sounds good in that it explains database normalization. I entered into a big PHP/MySQL project with absolutely 0 database knowledge and started from scratch. Learning the database is the first thing. Fortunately this is easy because SQL is relatively straightforward, and you can use a command line client to modify the database, and it offers very good verbose feedback. The big hurdle was a good understanding of database normalization. In theory it seems to be very clear, but in practice you often have to think really hard, because the spirit of DB Normalization is efficiency and expandibility. The forms are strict rules, but there are always exceptions to be made. The thing is, once you design your database and spend a lot of time thinking about how it's implemented, the coding is much easier.

-jiblet