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What Are The Best Books For Learning Php Please suggest a book

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I would love some recommendations on what books are most helpful for learning PHP.I know XHTML, CSS, some Javascript. I do know some PHP as well.Also can someone also recommend some books on Advanced PHP, that actually shows how to create a fully functional and somewhat complex website/application. (Like RailSpace does for Ruby on Rails)

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Author: Larry Ullman writes some very good books on Php and MySql.
The beginning book is called "PHP: Visual QuickStart Guide (2nd Ed.)", and the next one is titled "PHP and MySQL: Visual QuickPro Guide (2nd Ed.)".
There is another one that is for intermediate/advanced users named "PHP 5 Advanced: Visual QuickPro Guide (2nd Ed.)".

He also has a series of books about MySql programming. Very clearly written. Easy to follow.
I have several of them and they are the ones I keep going back to reference when I have a problem.

Information about these books can be found at his web site located at http://www.larryullman.com/ .

Awesome teaching methods and uses real examples. Check with your library, or look them up at a book store near you...

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i dont see why you would need a book to learn php or html (: im 16 and i learned it pretty quick.. just through testing stuff out! hahaand my site is fully php now.. it might have some errors.. but it works for me ha!

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Why don't you do both? You try something out yourself, and you try to get help from a book.. that's the way I learned it, and I'm still learning ^_^ The PHP for dummies is indeed a very good book, I used it too, but after a little while you can easily do without, so I would try to borrow it somewhere, maybe by a library, instead of buying it.. just an advice :P

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Learning by testing

What Are The Best Books For Learning Php

 

Replying to gisellebebegirl

You say you learned PHP by trying stuff and it "works for you".

But all that means is that it works on one web server (the one you tested on - e.G. Apache?) and in one browser on the client side (e.G. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6?).

 

What happens if your ISP changes to another web server (e.G. IIS)? What happens if your users are using Firefox? Or Safari? or MSIE 5? or MSIE 7?

 

It will break, that's what will happen.

 

That's why you must NEVER "learn" a language just by trial and error. Understand what is SPECIFIED in the language definition. Then, later, you may need to make tweaks for bugs in specific browsers or servers. But you will be doing that from a solid base.

 

The way you have learned it, you are building on quicksand.

 

 

-reply by Nostromo

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1. The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS3 with CSS, Ajax, and PHP The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS3 with CSS, Ajax, and PHPBy David Powers5.0 stars 23 reviewsReleased 2007-07-22Try these!! ( Random Number )2. PHP 6 and MySQL 5 for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide PHP 6 and MySQL 5 for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro GuideBy Larry Ullman4.5 stars 132 reviewsReleased 2007-12-293. Practical Web 2.0 Applications with PHP Practical Web 2.0 Applications with PHPBy Quentin Zervaas5.0 stars 6 reviewsReleased 2007-12-2017. Professional Search Engine Optimization with PHP: A Developer's Guide to SEO Professional Search Engine Optimization with PHP: A Developer's Guide to SEOBy Jaimie Sirovich, and Cristian Darie0 stars 0 reviewsReleased 2007-04-169. Beginning PHP and MySQL: From Novice to Professional, Third Edition (Beginning from Novice to Professional) Beginning PHP and MySQL: From Novice to Professional, Third Edition (Beginning from Novice to Professional)By W. Jason Gilmore4.0 stars 95 reviewsReleased 2008-03-247. Programming PHP Programming PHPBy Rasmus Lerdorf, Kevin Tatroe, and Peter MacIntyre4.0 stars 52 reviewsReleased 2006-04-2814. PHP Solutions: Dynamic Web Design Made Easy (Solutions) PHP Solutions: Dynamic Web Design Made Easy (Solutions)By David Powers4.5 stars 29 reviewsReleased 2006-11-205. Wicked Cool PHP: Real-World Scripts That Solve Difficult Problems Wicked Cool PHP: Real-World Scripts That Solve Difficult ProblemsBy William Steinmetz, and Brian Ward5.0 stars 3 reviewsReleased 2008-02-0912. Practical Web 2.0 Applications with PHP (Practical) Practical Web 2.0 Applications with PHP (Practical)By Quentin Zervaas5.0 stars 6 reviewsReleased 2007-12-2015. Regular Expression Pocket Reference: Regular Expressions for Perl, Ruby, PHP, Python, C, Java and .NET (Pocket Reference (O'Reilly)) Regular Expression Pocket Reference: Regular Expressions for Perl, Ruby, PHP, Python, C, Java and .NET (Pocket Reference (O'Reilly))By Tony Stubblebine4.0 stars 26 reviewsReleased 2007-07-1818. Webbots, Spiders, and Screen Scrapers: A Guide to Developing Internet Agents with PHP/CURL Webbots, Spiders, and Screen Scrapers: A Guide to Developing Internet Agents with PHP/CURLBy Michael Schrenk4.5 stars 11 reviewsReleased 2007-03-304. PHP and MySQL Web Development (3rd Edition) (Developer's Library) PHP and MySQL Web Development (3rd Edition) (Developer's Library)By Luke Welling, and Laura Thomson4.5 stars 174 reviewsReleased 2005-01-01 24. PHP Cookbook (Cookbooks (O'Reilly)) PHP Cookbook (Cookbooks (O'Reilly))By Adam Trachtenberg, and David Sklar4.5 stars 35 reviewsReleased 2006-08-256. Web Database Applications with PHP & MySQL, 2nd Edition Web Database Applications with PHP & MySQL, 2nd EditionBy Hugh E. Williams4.5 stars 55 reviewsReleased 2004-05-1616. PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide (2nd Edition) (Visual QuickPro Guide) PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide (2nd Edition) (Visual QuickPro Guide)By Larry Ullman4.5 stars 132 reviewsReleased 2005-07-0125. Web Standards Programmer's Reference: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Perl, Python, and PHP Web Standards Programmer's Reference: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Perl, Python, and PHPBy Steven M. Schafer3.5 stars 3 reviewsReleased 2005-08-0526. AJAX and PHP: Building Responsive Web Applications AJAX and PHP: Building Responsive Web ApplicationsBy Cristian Darie, Bogdan Brinzarea, Filip Chereches-Tosa, and Mihai Bucica4.5 stars 27 reviewsReleased 2006-03-0128. PHP Programming with MySQL PHP Programming with MySQLBy Don Gosselin1.5 stars 7 reviewsReleased 2005-12-268. PHP & MySQL For Dummies 3rd edition (For Dummies (Computer/Tech)) PHP & MySQL For Dummies 3rd edition (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))By Janet Valade4.0 stars 14 reviewsReleased 2006-11-2027.Sams Teach Yourself PHP in 10 Minutes (Sams Teach Yourself) Sams Teach Yourself PHP in 10 Minutes (Sams Teach Yourself)By Chris Newman4.5 stars 5 reviewsReleased 2005-04-0811.PHP for the World Wide Web, Second Edition (Visual QuickStart Guide) PHP for the World Wide Web, Second Edition (Visual QuickStart Guide)By Larry Ullman4.5 stars 77 reviewsReleased 2004-02-0210. PHP 5 / MySQL Programming for the Absolute Beginner (For the Absolute Beginner) PHP 5 / MySQL Programming for the Absolute Beginner (For the Absolute Beginner)By Andy Harris4.0 stars 16 reviewsReleased 2004-07-2323. Web Publishing with PHP and FileMaker 9 Web Publishing with PHP and FileMaker 9By Jonathan Stark5.0 stars 6 reviewsReleased 2007-09-0413. PHP 5 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach PHP 5 Recipes: A Problem-Solution ApproachBy Lee Babin, Nathan A. Good, Frank M. Kromann, and Jon Stephens5.0 stars 9 reviewsReleased 2005-09-2322. Learning PHP 5 Learning PHP 5By David Sklar3.5 stars 24 reviewsReleased 2004-0719. Open Source Development with LAMP: Using Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl, and PHP Open Source Development with LAMP: Using Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl, and PHPBy James Lee, and Brent Ware5.0 stars 3 reviewsReleased 2002-12-2730. Beginning Google Maps Applications with PHP and Ajax: From Novice to Professional Beginning Google Maps Applications with PHP and Ajax: From Novice to ProfessionalBy Michael Purvis, Jeffrey Sambells, and Cameron Turner4.5 stars 9 reviewsReleased 2006-08-1429. Beginning PHP and MySQL 5: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition (Beginning from Novice to Professional) Beginning PHP and MySQL 5: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition (Beginning from Novice to Professional)By W. Jason Gilmore4.0 stars 95 reviewsReleased 2006-01-2320. Foundation PHP for Dreamweaver 8 Foundation PHP for Dreamweaver 8By David Powers5.0 stars 36 reviewsReleased 2005-12-1921. PHP in Action: Objects, Design, Agility PHP in Action: Objects, Design, AgilityBy Dagfinn Reiersol, Marcus Baker, and Chris Shiflett4.5 stars 8 reviewsReleased 2007-07-03

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Some good books are Developing PHP Applications for IBM Data Servers Programming PHP A Programmer's Introduction to PHP 4.0 PHP 5 Power Programming Practical PHP ProgrammingHope that helped!

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Well, when i started learning PHP, I bought a few books on it, the two I found very useful, were The PHP and MySQL bible (Converse & park with Morgan), which is very detailed information about most of the language, and PHP and MySQL web development third edition (Welling Thompson), Which includes many exemples like a forum, which are useful for setting up a large website.Of corse the web is a very helpful resource too, w3schools is a very useful site, and just typing problems into google is very useful.However, I personally often find web tutorials are not detailed enough, and dont explain how things work, or explain in enough detail how to do more useful things with what they teach you to do. But the web is useful for the odd tip.

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//dead

is broken displaying message The page you requested doesnot exist. If you want to read ebooks I refer Php for Dummies.

Edited by OpaQue (see edit history)

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I would love some recommendations on what books are most helpful for learning PHP.
I know XHTML, CSS, some Javascript. I do know some PHP as well.

Also can someone also recommend some books on Advanced PHP, that actually shows how to create a fully functional and somewhat complex website/application. (Like RailSpace does for Ruby on Rails)


From what I have seen no book explains the complete development or fully functional website. All books do is to give you a basic understanding to get you started in whatever you want to do. Books helps in understanding the framework or the underlying architecture. The only best way to learn or develop a fully functional website or portal is to start working on it by exploring.

Exploring is the first part, where you decide what has to be done, how has to be done, the different technologies that has to be used, how they gets linked, decide on scalability issues, decide on the backend or the client server architecture etc. Once this is done, you have basically crossed a big hurdle.

The next step is to plan as to what exactly has to be done and how. Prioritize the list of tasks that has to be completed...

Learning curve will be very steep in this case. It will also be valuable. This is the way to go about... and i doubt if you will find a book that will explain all the intricacies of developing a fully functional site. Hope this helps.

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I've read a couple but the one I found to be THE BEST is:

 

Web Database Application with PHP and MySQL, 2nd Edition

 

By David Lane, Hugh E. Williams

 

It a must-read for anyone starting from scratch!

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