When it comes to the PHP code listings in this book, you'll either be impressed by the spacious layout with plenty of room for notes, or aghast at the amount of space taken up by uninterrupted, uncommented stretches of code. Either way, the code is solidly written--it's efficient and worth studying as part of your educational effort--but some weird and unnecessary line breaks damage the flow a bit. The main point: this is a book of solutions that work, with long code listings for people who like to study that way. --David Wall

Topics covered: Solving common Web site problems with PHP and MySQL. Sections address the fundamentals of PHP and MySQL, but the authors quickly transition into full applications: a shopping cart, a user authenticator, an e-mail sender, and a graphics-file manipulator are among the best.

Product Description
Use PHP to accomplish real-world, professional tasks. PHP Professional Projects is your key to unlocking the power of PHP. Each project focuses on a specific concept and is based on a real-world situation. Enhance your skills as you work through five projects including creating a user registration form, storing and retrieving data from files, working with MySQL using PHP, creating a catalog and shopping cart, and user authentication and tracking. When you are finished, you will have the skills necessary to modify projects to fit your professional needs.

Skip this one,...


Lots of typo, not really for professional projects   June 18, 2003
 1 out of 2 found this review helpful

First off, this is not a book for professional projects. The topics that the author discuss are very basic and not really pointing out any key concept. This book is more appropriate with the title such as 'Beginner Guide to PHP'. There are also typos throughtout the entire book. I spent more time correcting the errors in the code sample than graspping the concept itself. Not to mention that the examples layout on the page are very unorganized, the book doesn't make good use of margin and tabs. The screen captures are not very well prepared. Good book to read for fun or freshing up on PHP, but definetely not for professional projects.


Very Incomplete   April 13, 2003
This book is very incomplete. It is very brief on key issues, I can never find what I'm looking for.


Consider Something Else!   February 10, 2003
 3 out of 3 found this review helpful

This book was a great disappointment! I am building a large application in PHP and was looking for some good project planning strategies and patterns. Instead I found the usual shopping cart examples written as if for a small scale project. The code snippets are full of white space and a few lines of code takes up an entire page, hence it is hard to follow. What little code I did try was full of errors and bad syntax. This book does not have a CD with it so you must type in all the code that you may want to start with. I suggest the book 'Web Applications Development with PHP 4.0' for your true professional projects.