PHP 5 Power Programming 218
| PHP 5 Power Programming | |
| author | Andi Gutmans, Stig Saether Bakken, Derick Rethans |
| pages | 720 pages |
| publisher | Prentice Hall/PTR |
| rating | 9 |
| reviewer | Mary Norbury-Glaser |
| ISBN | 013147149X |
| summary | PHP 5 Power Programming |
Chapter 1 sets the stage by asking "What Is New in PHP 5"? The chapter begins with a quote from John Scully: "The best way to be ready for the future is to invent it," which perfectly describes the authors: Andy Gutmans and Zeev Suraski have continued to push the PHP project to improve on the original foundation and to add cleaner programming enhancements. The leap from v.4 to v.5 is no exception, as this new version has brought singular advances: OO programming with PHP enjoys a leap forward in focus with a complete redesign of its object model, a completely re-written MySQL extension (MySQLi), support for SQLite, a new mechanism for handling errors via exceptions, a suite of re-written XML extensions based on the libxml2 library, a C-based implementation of SOAP and a new memory manager.
Following this tour of the new features of PHP 5, the reader is exposed to a brief chapter on the basic language of PHP. An experienced developer can skip this chapter, but it's a very good overview of the syntax including variables and superglobals, basic data types (integers, strings, booleans, arrays, constants), operators, control structures (conditional, loop, code) and functions.
PHP 5's OO support is the subject of Chapter 3. Object oriented programming was introduced in PHP 3 but it was in an extremely elementary form and while it was improved upon in PHP 4, it truly comes into its own in PHP 5. Covered in this chapter are the basics of the OO model, object creation and lifetime, access restriction keywords and the benefits of using class inheritance, as well as tips for exception handling.
Chapter 4 is a well written chapter on advanced OOP and design patterns (strategy, singleton, factory and observer), with some very good code examples on iterators and the reflection API, which allows the programmer to collect information about his or her script at runtime.
Chapter 5, "How to Write a Web Application with PHP," is an excellent fusion of code and best practices in developing a complete dynamic web application based on PHP. The concept of good design practices is often overlooked in "how-to" manuals. Rather, many technical books focus on overcoming code issues and avoiding pitfalls associated with poor code execution. Here, the authors take time out to detail techniques on making scripts "safe" ("trust nobody, especially not the users of your web applications"). Bugs and security holes are a fact of life, and this chapter covers some very practical techniques to avoid consequences arising from weirdness caused by users as well as from deliberate attempts by bad guys to crack a site's security.
Databases are covered in depth in Chapter 6. SQL and SQLite are discussed (each with a section on strengths and weaknesses) before examining the new database-connectivity features of PHP5 using mysqli and sqlite extensions. PEAR DB is also presented, with a section on the pros and cons of using a database abstraction layer like PEAR DB. Connections, queries, fetching modes/results and other topics are well covered. I would have liked to see some additional discussion and implementation of SMARTY in this chapter. SMARTY is a template engine with an ability to cache templates into PHP scripts which saves on overhead and contributes to speed and efficiency.
Error handling is the topic of Chapter 7. Types of errors (undefined symbol errors, portability errors, runtime errors and PHP errors), PEAR errors (PEAR_error class, handling of PEAR errors and PEAR error modes) and exceptions (exceptions explained and the specifics of using exceptions) are treated adroitly.
"XML with PHP 5" in Chapter 8 will undoubtedly become a focal point of the book for many readers. Along with the addition of support for OO programming, using the new XML extensions are some of the most exciting developments in PHP 5. The XML implementation is standardized on libxml2, compliant with W3 standards and extremely efficient. This chapter introduces XML in PHP 5 with sections on the vocabulary of XML, parsing (SAX, DOM, XPath), the SimpleXML extension (very cool, because this allows the programmer to access the XML through a data structure representation, treating the information as objects), PEAR classes that deal with XML (XML_Tree, XML_RSS), converting XML and communicating with XML (XML-RPC, SOAP). PHP 5's new SOAP extension is a welcome improvement over previous PHP versions.
Following this excellent chapter is one on other valuable mainstream extensions: files and streams (I/O streams, compression streams, URL streams, locking, renaming and removing files, temporary files), regular expressions, date handling, graphics manipulation with GD ("gif draw" to old-timers, "graphics draw" to the youngsters) and multi-byte strings and character sets. This is a solid chapter encompassing the wide range of functions that are intrinsic to the core of PHP to the many favorite and practical extensions that are outside the core of PHP.
Chapters 10 through 12 deal with PEAR: installing PEAR, commands, packages and components. Stig Bakken's extensive knowledge and experience is obviously prevalent here. It's worth noting that you won't find a better single coverage of PEAR and PHP 5 anywhere else.
For those readers experienced in PHP 4 and who are looking to move to v.5 and are wondering what to expect during the transition, Chapter 13, "Making the Move", will be of particular interest. The authors suggest that in migrating to PHP 5, "you can encounter some minor incompatibilities" and address a number of these: using compatibility mode to revert to PHP 4 behavior, recognizing script problems using OO features and learning the new names and locations of files in the PHP 5 distro, among others. Users of PHP on the Windows platform may want to spend some time over this chapter (and maybe reconsider their choice of development platform!).
Designing for performance is the subject of Chapter 14, and the authors encourage the reader to plan for optimal performance during the design phase: benchmarking, profiling with Zend Studio's Profiler, APD (Advanced PHP Debugger) and Xdebug, using APC (Advanced PHP Cache) and ZPS (Zend Performance Suite), optimizing code using micro-benchmarks, rewriting in C and writing procedural versus OO code. This extensive chapter offers the reader a fairly complete set of tools and sage advice for more efficient design.
Chapter 15 is titled "An Introduction to Writing PHP Extensions," and introduces the extension API that allows developers to write custom PHP extensions. This isn't a chapter for everyone, since there are already a large number of available extensions and, as the authors note, unless you need to wrap an existing C library to give it an interface from PHP then you can easily skim or skip this chapter entirely. Note, though, that memory management has a section here and it's worth a read because of PHP 5's support for multi-threaded environments.
The final chapter of the book is called "PHP Shell Scripting," and explores the CLI SAPI (command line interface Server API). There is an introduction to PHP CLI shell scripts (how CLI differs from CGI, the shell scripting environment, parsing CL options, good practice) with some nice examples.
Appendices on PEAR and PECL (PHP Extension Community Library) Package Index, phpDocumenter format Reference and Zend Studio Quick Start Guide complete the volume.
The authors succeed in providing an excellent manual for "power programming" in PHP 5. There is terrific guidance here for many PHP developers and experienced Java, C++ and C# coders who are looking to either migrate to PHP 5 from v.4 or who are looking to gain experience in PHP programming. The experience the authors bring to the table is indisputable and their style of writing and the ease with which they bring new language and tools to their audience is admirable.
You can purchase PHP 5 Power Programming from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Re:Upgrade to 5 (Score:5, Informative)
Out of curiousity how many people are using PHP5? My hosting still only supports 4.3.something. And I'm still doing my testing strictly on 4.x to match current hosting options.
I tried using PHP 5 with my web host. It was a little bit slower, probably because version 5 was compiled as a CGI instead of a module. I am sure a comparison of both as modules would have been pretty close, if not dead even. Anyway, everything worked fine. From what I can tell version 5 is good for backwards compatibility.
Re:Upgrade to 5 (Score:2, Informative)
There is a backport available (Score:3, Informative)
Works great.
Having read the book... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Upgrade to 5 (Score:2, Informative)
For now, you will either have to scavenge the internet to find a host that supports it, or wait until it becomes more mainstream.
Another reason I believe that many hosts are not making the switch is that many popular PHP software has not been upgraded to support PHP5. phpBB, InvisionBoard, and the like all support PHP4, but have mainly 3rd party versions for PHP5. Why make the switch when most do not support the updated version?
(By the way, first post!)
Re:Upgrade to 5 (Score:3, Informative)
After speaking with many hosts, they won't upgrade because their hosting package (ie: cpanel) doesn't support it yet. And they won't upgrade until that happens. The problem with cpanal supporting it is that some of the scripts they bundle (namely osCommerence) don't work in PHP5.
I've also found a lot that people still believe PHP5 is in beta and not compatible with PHP4 code. But here's the good word [php.net] on the situation from the PHP folks.
I have this book (Score:3, Informative)
Covers lots of things even the basics, has some really good advice on form security and session security and explains how the hackers actually attempt to exploit loopholes in your forms and session data and how to get around this.
Has a guide to generating bar charts/graphs which I found really usefull. Has good info on XML and SOAP, SQLi and multiple queries.
It tends to have quite a beginners approach, but I'm not discrediting the book and dont let this put you off, the subject matter and topics covered make it more than worthwhile for php professionals and there is a wealth of information for migrators looking to use the new php5 (eg OOP) features.
Good for Experienced OO programmers (Score:3, Informative)
That said, I don't think this book would really do a good job showing someone how to use the OO features effectively who had never been exposed to it before, and that's probably fine. Just don't expect its half ass coverage of design patterns to give you a whole lot if you haven't scene them before.
-K
PHP5 projects (Score:2, Informative)
PHP5 really is a nice step forward from PHP4. It's improved object support and exception handling make it easier to sell as a "real language" with management and clients. And PDO [php.net] looks quite promising as well. Unfortunately, it is hard to find hosts that support PHP5.
I've put together a set of componenets that I developed under a loose framework for PHP5, called phacade [madskills.com] , that provide some of the conveniences of ASP.NET and JavaServer Faces, without all the headeaches those two technologies seem to include. phacade aims to provide components that can be used simply for simple projects, and as simply as possible for complex projects. Much like PHP itself, phacade is intended to work equally well for both procedural and Object Oriented scripts.
If you're a PHP5 developer, please check it out and feel free to send feedback.
Anyone else have any interesting PHP5 projects?
Re:Upgrade to 5 (Score:4, Informative)
I do a lot of DOM / XSLT programming for freelance and for my job. I just refuse to use PHP4 when I don't have to do so. DomXML in PHP4 used functions in order to return objects.
E.g: $node->first_child();
Therefore, it was impossible to go:
E.g: $node->first_child()->attributes;
In PHP5, it's simply:
$node->firstChild->attributes;
I believe in PHP5, it's possible to call the method of an object returned directly ($obj->func()->func2()).
The upgrade from PHP4 to PHP5 is nowhere as painful as from PHP3 to PHP4. In fact, the only errors I ended up logging when I transitioned over were my own coding errors that didn't show up in PHP4 ($this->item was being referenced outside of a class).
I'm gonna be loading the MySQLi module on there when I get the chance. I've really been itching to do stuff like MySQLi::prepare outside of Pear:DB. Not to mention, being able to use SSL to connect to MySQL from PHP is a definate plus.
Re:PHP5 projects (Score:3, Informative)
I used the simpler OO in version 4 everywhere so I want to make sure I don't break anything. My favorite libraries - adodb and smarty - have all been ported to 5 so I don't see any problems there.
The biggest problem is support in some third-party apps we are looking at using. That and the fact that they don't freakin support postgresql which is where we're header with our internal databases for this type of stuff.
Re:Having read the book... (Score:3, Informative)
If you want to learn about scaling a PHP application and making use of the new features in PHP5, I would heartily recommend buying George's book. Just check out the table of contents for an idea of what all is covered. I've especially appreciated the information about documentation generation, unit testing, and exception handling.
Re:Getting Free Electronic Versions? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.phptr.com/series/series.asp?ser=335494 [phptr.com]
Well, this is the main page. There's a link just after the intro.
Re:Open Source series of technical books (Score:1, Informative)
The Bruce Perens' Open Source Series is designed to give a voice to up-and-coming Open Source authors. Each book in the Series is published under the Open Publication License, an Open Source compatible book license. Electronic versions will be made available at no cost several months after each book's publication.
Re:Coldfusion still wins my heart (Score:2, Informative)