Learning PHP: A Gentle Introduction to the Web's Most Popular Language

If you are a beginner don't bother with this book. The examples are in the book can't be completed because of numerous errors. You will probably need to use something like w3schools.com to learn coding. One example 2-6if (strcasecmp($_POST['email'], '[email protected]') == 0) {print "Welcome back, US President.";}No <?php or ?> marks no forms where included for the 'email' data. It could have been done easier withan <?php echo strcasecmp("Hello World", "HELLO WORLD"); ?> or use other example from php.net

It starts from scratch, chapters are short, nice summary and engaging exercises at the end of chapters.

Needed to transition to PHP for a project, and didn't need to sit through CS101 again. I liked that I was able to skip around and get what I needed without missing context

A very good book for beginners who are looking for an introduction to some of the basics and a few in depth explanations and examples!

I wish that all the concepts in the book related to 1 project. I hate when childish examples are used to explain things. I learn best when I can see how functions, objects and if/else statements are used in real projects. Great reference book but you would need another learning source if your super new to PHP.

We are using this in a self-paced study group. It is working out fine.

Just Amazing.

My rating of 2 stars is because the book was not much help for me. It might help others if they are unfamiliar with PHP and any of the languages similar to it.I already know C++ and C#. If you know C++, Java and/or C# then you probably won't learn much new in this book. The main thing that is different for PHP that the book describes is arrays. Other than that this book does not describe the language as much as I wanted it to.One thing I have difficulty understanding is includes (including requires). They work differently from #includes in C++. I was hoping for some help understanding includes in PHP but the book said nothing that is not obvious. I did not see something helping me to understand when to use include and when to use include_once.I don't remember it saying anything about the "$" that all variables begin with. Is there anytime when a variable has something else besides a "$" at the beginning? If so then I don't think that is describedChapters 2 and 3 is basic stuff that if you are familiar with other languages, you won't need much help understanding. Chapter 4 is about arrays and that might help. Chapter 5 is about functions and a little about scope. Chapter 6 is about classes and objects and if you already know an OOP language then most of the basics also apply to PHP. Chapter 7 is about web forms, but it is mostly about HTML web forms and not much about the PHP language except what is easy to understand. Chapter 8 is about databases; much of it is about SQL but most of the rest is about PHP Data Objects (PDO). Chapter 9 is about files and I think I can use the PHP manual when I need to work with files in PHP. Chapter 10 is also more about HTML (cookies) than the PHP language. The rest of the book was equally not helpful for me.A beginner might get a good start with the book but they will certainly need more before they can adequately understand the language.I was able to borrow my copy from the Los Angeles Public Library. If the book had helped me then I would have purchased it but it did not help.I suspect that the person claiming to be the author did not actually write it. That is only my opinion and it does not really matter to me if he did or did not. I am not a grammar expert and I know only English but I think that some of the grammar in the book would not have been written by someone who's native language is English. For example, page 279 says "a set of files that gets released" instead of "a set of files that are released" or "a set of files that are to be released". I can be wrong; I do see many people, especially news people, make mistakes with English grammar and as I say I am no expert.

Il libro è carente nell'illustrazione del linguaggio in particolare per quanto riguarda la OOP non accennando nemmeno per esempio ai distruttori o al metodo __toString(), ma è completo nell'esporre le funzionalità di libreria con esempi semplici c.a cookie, sessioni, operazioni su array etc. e senza trascurare cenni a cose un po' più esoteriche come i protocol wrapper.