PHP and MySQL Web Development 3rd Edition review

ISBN 0672326728

PAGES 984

PHP and MySQL Web Development is one of the best-selling books on the topic, written by Luke Welling and Laura Thompson.

The book opens with a crash course in PHP, followed by chapters on file processing, arrays, string manipulation, writing your own functions and parameters and object-oriented PHP. If you've programmed in other languages, this section of the book will be redundant, and you can skip it. Section two of the book discusses MySQL. You get an introduction to relational databases at lightning speed, basic use of MySQL and how to insert, retrieve and update data.

By chapter 11, the book is tackling more useful subjects such as how to access your MySQL database from the web with PHP. You're shown the basic steps of using a database from the web. There's also a reasonable chapter on advanced topics such as making the database secure, optimising queries and backing up and restoring your data.

Four chapters cover e-commerce and security, with general discussions of risks and threats, and information on security policies, authentication, encryption and digital certificates. You're shown how to implement authentication with PHP and MySQL, and how to set up and implement secure transactions using the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). By this stage, the book is far more interesting.

Part four of the book takes a look at more advanced PHP techniques such as using the file system, network and protocol functions, date and time issues and image generation. There's also an excellent chapter on session control and how to implement it.

The final section of the book looks at a number of PHP and MySQL projects, such as building a shopping cart, a content management system, a web-based email service, a mailing list manager and web forums.

This is a brute of a book; it runs to almost 1,000 pages and weighs over 1.4kg. A CD containing the source code for all the examples in the book is also included. It also contains the entire book in PDF format, plus source code and binaries for PHP 5, MySQL 5 and Apache.

PHP and MySQL Web Development is well written and the examples are extremely useful. Some sections may be less useful to experienced users, but they're there if you need them. The best thing about the book is that it shows you how to put together PHP and MySQL. Several titles cover one or the other, but not many look at practical uses of the combination. Overall, it's a great read.