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Beginning PHP and MySQL 5.0
Posted by
samzenpus
on Mon May 22, 2006 02:52 PM
from the getting-started dept.
from the getting-started dept.
Ravi Kumar writes "PHP and MySQL use is so prevalent that nowadays it is hard to miss seeing a website on the net which has been built using these technologies. The beauty of PHP is in its open nature and the rich set of libraries and modules which imparts a lot of power and flexibility to the programmer. Similarly MySQL is a free database which is ideal for use as a backend for any website. And not surprisingly there are a plethora of books in the market which explains these two topics. One such book is Beginning PHP and MySQL 5 from Novice to Professional authored by W.Jason Gilmore published by Apress." Read the rest of Ravi's review.
Spread over 860 pages and divided into a whooping 37 chapters, this book covers the PHP Language and MySQL database in detail. As the name indicates, the book endeavors to hand hold a newbie in the various aspects of PHP programming like the language constructs and progressively brings him to the level of a professional. The first 21 chapters of the book solely concentrates on PHP where the author explains with the aid of examples how to write good programs in PHP.
The author starts the narration by giving a brief history of PHP and then moves on to explain all the syntax constructs of this language in great detail. Arrays, functions and classes have each been provided separate chapters of their own. Usually I have found many books related to programming jumping straight into describing the language syntax and about writing code. But this book has a dedicated chapter each covering how to setup and configure PHP and MySQL on ones machine irrespective of the OS being used which breathes some fresh air to this subject. PHP language has a very good similarity with C/C++ at-least in the syntax. And in the sixth chapter, the author explains the Object Oriented Concepts like object cloning, inheritance and polymorphism of this language with clarity.
The maturity of any programming language is gauged by the type of traps that it has developed to check the errors and exceptions that might be generated dynamically when a program is run. PHP has a rich set of features for handling errors. Earlier versions of PHP already took care of notifying errors through configuration directives and support for logging. But one thing this robust language lacked was support for exception handling. And from PHP ver 5.0 onwards, this feature has also been included in it. The 8th chapter in this book titled Errors and Exception Handling explains all these important concepts in detail. The fact that the author has provided snippets of code to illustrate each concept that is explained goes a long way in understanding this topic.
Another of PHPs strengths is in its support of a rich set of regular expressions and string manipulation functions. Using regular expressions, one can match just about any string or a sub-set of it and even do manipulations to the matched string on the fly. The string matching functions form the backbone of many user input validations. In the 9th chapter titled "String and Regular Expressions", the author explains with the aid of code how to use the rich set of string manipulation functions available in PHP to get the desired results.
The 10th chapter is solely dedicated to working with files and operating systems where the author explains in his inimitable style different ways of reading from and writing to files. All the frequently used file manipulation functions are explained in this chapter with the aid of examples.
The first 12 chapters of the book solely concentrates on explaining the PHP language to the readers. In the next 4 chapters, the author moves into practical aspects like explaining how to mix PHP with HTML elements, user authentication , handling file uploads, sending and receiving email using PHP code and so on. I found the section where the author explains how to build specialized programs such as a port scanner, subnet converter and bandwidth tester all with the aid of PHP code really fascinating. The author introduces the reader to some of the MySQL concepts in this part of the book like connecting to a database and reading data from database but the more detailed aspects of database manipulation are left for later chapters which deals with MySQL in more depth.
The 21st chapter titled Secure PHP programming throws light on topics related to enhancing security while coding in PHP such as enabling safe mode for people who run PHP in a shared-server environment, PHP's encryption capabilities, securely configuring PHP via its configuration parameters and so on.
From the 22nd chapter onwards, the book takes an all together different turn and moves into explaining the database concepts which plays an important part in any dynamically generated website. More specifically, the succeeding chapters concentrate on explaining the configuration and use of MySQL 5.0 and how one can use PHP to interact with the MySQL database. The chapter titled Introducing PDO throws light on the abstraction layer used between PHP and MySQL. I especially liked the 26th chapter where the author lists the different MySQL clients which are available to the user like mysql, mysqladmin, mysqlshow and so on. In fact, each and every tool which comes bundled with the mysql server is explained thoroughly with the aid of examples. But that is not all, this chapter also explains how to configure a mysql database using third party clients like PHPMyAdmin, MySQL Query Browser, MySQL Administrator and Navicat. In the section on securing MySQL, the author goes into the finer nuances of the topic. For example, with the aid of commands, the author explains how to make sure that the user connects with the database over secure sockets layer (SSL) or ways of encrypting the MySQL database traffic which is an eye opener.
But I would say the 29th chapter titled PHP's MySQL Extension is the most important chapter in the entire book just because it is in this chapter that the author explains in detail the variety of ways in which one can connect to MySQL database and retrieve or manipulate the data using PHP code.
In the 30th chapter titled PHP's MySQLi Extension, one gets to know how to use the enhanced MySQLi extension to connect to the database. The MySQLi extension contains more enhancements over its predecessor in that it is object oriented, supports prepared statements, provides transactional support, has better debugging capabilities among other things. But the down side as the author puts it is that it requires PHP 5.0 for it to work.
The last six chapters deal with special features of MySQL and how one can write PHP code to use those features. The features like stored routines, MySQL triggers and Views have been provided with a dedicated chapter of their own. And yes, from MySQL ver 5.0, support for views have also been incorporated in the database. And the fact that this book covers these new topics in detail makes this a truly useful book not only for budding programmers but also for the gurus among us.
I really liked the layout of the book. Each section is accompanied by PHP code snippet which shows how it is done. Just because one gets two books at the price of one does not mean that the book is short on detail. In fact the opposite is true and the 860 pages contain all that is needed for coming upto date with the latest version of PHP and MySQL. Of course the inclusion of a couple of pages giving a complete project such as a shopping cart application at the end of the book would have imparted a nice touch especially since this book is targeted at beginners too. But that is a minor detail and I guess there are limits to which a books of even this size can cram information. All in all an informative book which gives good value for money.
The author of this book W.Jason Gilmore has developed countless PHP and MySQL applications over the past seven years, and has dozens of articles to his credit on this and other topics pertinent to Internet application development. He has had articles featured in, among others, Linux Magazine and Developer.com, and adopted for use within United Nations and Ford Foundation educational programs. Jason is the author of three books, including most recently the best-selling Beginning PHP and MySQL: From Novice to Professional, and, with coauthor Robert Treat, Beginning PHP and PostgreSQL 8: From Novice to Professional. These days Jason splits his time between running Apress's Open Source program, experimenting with spatially enabled Web applications, and starting more home remodeling projects than he could possibly complete.
Ravi Kumar is passionate about all things related to GPL and open source and likes to share his thoughts through his blog."
You can purchase Beginning PHP and MySQL 5.0 - From Novice to Professional from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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Misleading Title (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Misleading Title (Score:3, Informative)
What the hell is the title? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
LAMP Rocks (Score:3, Interesting)
You can do some incredible stuff with PHP/MySQL if you put your mind to it. One of my favorite projects (it wasn't the definitive or only one!) was a windows app that hooked keypresses. Every so often it would upload the number of keypresses to some PHP / MySQL code and update your user profile.
The application potential is impressive, and not fully exploited the way I look at it.
Re:LAMP Rocks (Score:5, Insightful)
However, although I'm the first to brag about the power, simplicity, and performance that PHP and Apache offer when used by the right programmer, I do make a living off of ASP.NET/SQL Server applications, so please consider the following in the ensuing flamewar:
1. PHP is an extremely flexible scripting lanuage, that really excells at what it does: powering the back-end of a web application and interfacing with databases and the file system. Trying to make PHP do other things is possible, but is almost always a nasty hack.
2. The
3. Say what you will about SQL Server, but if we could just replace the M in LAMP with PostreSQL, or, well, anything other than MySQL, I would be happy. SQL Server is not my favorite database, but it is very good. MySQL has its niche, but I expect a RDMS to have stored procedures and transactions as standard fare.
(yes, I know 5.0 has SPs, and InnoDB gives you transactions, but I said "standard fare")
4. This is the most important point of all: There are just as many cookie-cutter, craptastic, insecure, bug-ridden PHP apps out there as there are ASP.NET apps. On the other hand, if you are smart and creative, and truly use the tools provided by either platform, you can create fantastic applications with either one, just as easily.
Parent
Re:LAMP Rocks (Score:5, Insightful)
PHP is an extremely flexible scripting lanuage, that really excells at what it does: powering the back-end of a web application and interfacing with databases and the file system. Trying to make PHP do other things is possible, but is almost always a nasty hack.
Help me out here: you're saying that PHP is extremely flexible, as long as the programmer only tries to write one type of program with it? Hmmmm?
I think we both recognize the truth: compared to Python, Ruby, or Lisp, PHP is not very flexible at all. It's a poorly designed, inflexible language that happens to have gained momentum at a critical era in the history of the WWW.
Parent
Re:LAMP Rocks (Score:3, Insightful)
What does this even mean? You know that they are available, but you don't want to use them? You don't support using the latest versions? You seem to want to imply something, but I can't figure out what it is.
Re:LAMP Rocks (Score:2)
As an example, I seem to remember that FOREIGN KEY REFERENCES was silently ignored in MySQL with the
Re:LAMP Rocks (Score:2)
VB.NET is a fine language, if a tad verbose for my taste.
My problem is not with the language. My problem is with the swarms of morons churning out God-awful code using said language.
I don't want another PHP book (Score:2, Interesting)
Whoa, look at the time. Next language/framework/ide please...
Re:I don't want another PHP book (Score:4, Informative)
I believe there's also a MySQL Cookbook, but my database use isn't so advanced that I need specific help on that just yet.
I'm still learning proper programming technique, while trying to learn PHP and MySQL and the fine points of CSS AND crank out a new web site that won't require a massive rewrite in a year.
Parent
Tries to do too much (Score:2)
A book like the one being reviewed tries to do too much. When you're starting out, you don't want a a lot of detailed library stuff getting in the way. Once you've got the basics done, you don't want a book that teaches it like a course, you want a reference.
ROR (Score:2)
Damn kids these days.
How does this book compare to.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How does this book compare to.. (Score:2)
Php.org has got some great language resources. mySQL.com...eh, not as good, but decent if you have a basic grasp of SQL.
Re:How does this book compare to.. (Score:2)
I go a lot faster with a good reference book then I do hunting online.
Re:How does this book compare to.. (Score:2)
Owner of previous edition (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Owner of previous edition (Score:2)
Prevalent != Best (Score:2)
Examine the options in the tools available to you, pick what works for you.
I've tried MySQL and PHP and mod-perl and CGI and python, but my current favorites are PostgreSQL [postgresql.org] and Tomcat [apache.org] hosting Java Servlets. No books required, their included documentation is quite good.
persistent problem (Score:5, Interesting)
this is a persistent problem with all of these programming in ____________ books. They teach the language and sometimes get around to dealing with good programming. Learning PHP, or java, or python, or whatever is still not learning to program. Learning to program effectively should be the first priority. All the OOP features in PHP5 are of no use to someone without good knowledge of OOP. Likewise, I'd gather that most of the insecurities in PHP are the result of poor design. PHP is great for its templating features, the ability to separate content from design, and its speed of development. But, that still doesn't make it secure or effective. How many times does a programmer get in trouble becasue they don't escape double quotes in a TEXT field in mysql, or account for malformed URL's, html, bad javascript, etc.?
No matter how good these books are, and I'm sure they do a good job of presenting all of PHP's features and strenghts, they still usually lack teaching how to design a web site/application, how to effectively use passwords, secure data queries, efficient programming, etc. That might be an altogether different beast, but there's a world of difference between using PHP in a web site and writing a good web app. I'd wish that the books would focus more on good programming techniques. I don't imagine everyone will buy the book otherwise, and not everyone will benefit the same, but I've not found too many books that put "programming" ahead of "programming in".
Re:persistent problem (Score:2)
This isn't idle for me - I want to contribute to a particular open source project (via programming; I currently do testing/documentation/etc.). While I work in IT, my background isn't in IT, and my programming education stopped at CS102, many years ago. I've taught myself plenty of BAD programming in PHP etc., but I'd like someone to suggest a book that teaches "good programming".
To put it best, I learned my pro
Re:persistent problem (Score:2)
Um, sorry, could you show me which language more tightly couples content and design?
Binding content and design is what those web template languages do. It's why they're better than traditional CGI scripts for quick projects and crash and burn for large projects, unless you add something to manage the separation. That some people have managed to assemble frameworks that do sort of separate cont
Only one chapter (Score:2)
Re:Only one chapter (Score:2)
WAMP kicks a considerable amount of ass (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.en.wampserver.com/ [wampserver.com]
WAFP (Score:2)
At least for a site with ten hits a day. All of which are from 127.0.0.1.
Re:WISP kicks more (Score:2)
Re:WAMP kicks a considerable amount of ass (Score:2, Informative)
There's another similar project by the name of XAMPP [apachefriends.org]. XAMPP comes with quite a lot of other handy auxiliaries as well, such as eAccelerator, and it's available for Linux, Windows, Solaris and most recently OSX. The interesting thing is it supports both PHP 4 and 5, allowing easy testing of an application on both versions - and at least the Windows version comes with an automagical version switcher. I'd recommend giving both packages a look.
Do note this, however (and I think it goes for WAMP too):
Re:WAMP kicks a considerable amount of ass (Score:2)
For me -- doing is better than reading (Score:3, Interesting)
I learned the most I possibly could by downloading Wordpress (blog software), PHPBB (bulletin board software) and setting them up. I downloaded modifications and looked over the code in person.
Over the past few months I've become really adept at writing my own PHP and MySQL-based software, to the point that I'm starting to design my own CMS interface. Not a single thing I've learned from a book has stuck, but everything I learn in chomping on code in Notepad or emacs seems to stick forever.
Anyone else have problems with books on coding?
Re:For me -- doing is better than reading (Score:2, Insightful)
I use books only as a language reference. I find that no matter what I'm trying to accomplish in code, any book I own doesn't have examples that "fit" the pieces of my app that I'm struggling with. So what good is a book with 1000 pages of example codes and 300 pages of theory when 95% of the time it doesn't fit what I need anyways? I prefer the reference style book or snippet archive (TurboPascal days): "a Listbox has these properties, methods, and events and here is how they work" or "To make
power and flexibility, gee wiz (Score:2)
The same could be said for python or perl. I think PHP's main "beauty" feature is how easy it is to install, nothing more.
Re:power and flexibility, gee wiz (Score:2)
Also, as it's just as easy to install Perl, your argument doesn't hold a lot of water... there must be another reason it's so popular ;)
What can you do with PHP and MySQL ? (Score:3, Funny)
Plug for TinyButStrong (Score:2)
I've no connection with either of these two projects, just a very impressed user (and the TinyButStrong promo
Too much information (Score:2)
technologies.
If you are an experienced programmer and want to learn PHP I would recommend
reading O'Reilly's "PHP in Nutshell" book. You can read through the whole thing
in less than a day and pick up most of what you will need to know. Also you
cannot beat the online docs as a reference.
Re:but but (Score:2)
Re:but but (Score:2)
Forgot something else... (Score:2)
Why is it most of these reviews sound like grade school current events reports?
Re:Sec-exps already know PHP is the beginner's cho (Score:2, Insightful)
Is it the fault of the language? I can point to a few things where I can say, Shame on You, PHP!,
Re:Sec-exps already know PHP is the beginner's cho (Score:2)
This very issue would appear to be at the heart of many existing C (or C++) vs. Java arguments. The claim is/was that newbie programmers are not as dangerous if given Java.
Re:Sec-exps already know PHP is the beginner's cho (Score:2)
Hmmm...I thought that's what I said (although there have been some pretty bad holes in the core PHP bits themselves). On the other hand, "dumb entry-level programmers" was also one of the main knocks against IIS's ASP in its early days. (ASPX seems to have largely fixed this by being much less friendly than ASP to entry-level types.) ;)
Re:Sec-exps already know PHP is the beginner's cho (Score:5, Interesting)
Not blame the language? Why not? PHP is the only language that I know of that has like 6 or 7 functions just to escape strings to be injected in SQL queries and that still manages to get it wrong.
I mean, first time you try to hit a DB, you've heard about SQL injection you want to escape your inputs, are you using addslashes? Nope, and you should stripslashes too, if magic_quotes are active, because even though they're built in they fucking fail. Oh, there's an sqlite_escape_string, but you're using mysql so you'd probably use this lil' mysql_escape_string... except that you were really supposed to use mysql_real_escape_string, cause it's the real one you know. And the best part of all that shit? there is not one of the unsafe function that's marked anything even remotely close to "deprecated" or "dangerous", they are unsafe and should never be used, that's old news, and you can still use them n/p
Hell, PHP is the only language that I know of that does not feature any kind of prepared statement in it's standard DB interface. It only got prepared statements with the mysqli_ crapfest and that frigging piece of donkey poo requires you to create a prepared statement explicitely and then bind every single argument one by one to your statement.
This thing is the most retarded standard DB interface that's ever been born in this world, and it's only taken like 4 years for the Zend retards to unleash this abortion on us! Developers rejoice, maybe in 4 more years we'll get a DB interface on par with Perl's DBI or Python's DBAPI2...
And THIS is but one of the dozens of inherently stupid and/or insecure "features" PHP got built-in such as the good ol' REGISTER_GLOBALS, the hidden errors and notices, the lack of anything even remotely close to Perl's "use strict", the completely random and inconsistent function names and function outputs, the three-fucking-thousand functions all dumped into the global namespace (perl has 206, Python has 76 and ruby probably has less than a dozen)...
I'm all for blaming the builder, as long as he's got usable tools. PHP is nothing that can be called "usable tool" with a straight face, the whole "language" is a gigantic hack built with feces and vomit, it IS to blame, and blame it I do.
Parent
Re:Sec-exps already know PHP is the beginner's cho (Score:2)
Re:Any website? (Score:2)
Re:Any website? (Score:2)
If the developers at "all those banks and stock exchanges handling vast loads" are using PHP and MySQL with the help of this book to develop their applications, then I'm going to stuff my money under my mattress. Lighten up a little.
The problem is that too many beginners are shown easy software development languages and te
Stats, please (Score:2)
Or are you just repeating something you've heard?
Postgres may have more features and better support of SQL standards like transactions, triggers, stored procedures, etc, but these are things that improve data integrity, not performance.
MySQL has always been oriented to performance rather than features and its use as a backend for web sites has always been a
Re:Stats, please (Score:2)
Or are you just repeating something you've heard?
Why are you questioning this? This has been common knowledge for years. Both MySQL and PostgreSQL have their relative strengths.
From Wikipedia:
"Critics find MySQL's popularity surprising in the light of the existence of other open source database projects with comparable performance and in closer compliance
Wrong! (Score:2)