Rating:
(17 reviews)
Author: Kevin Yank
ISBN : 0987153080
New from $20.41
Format: PDF
You can download Free PHP & MySQL: Novice to Ninja [Paperback] from mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link
PHP & MySQL: Novice to Ninja is a practical hands-on guide to learning all the tools, principles and techniques needed to build a fully-functional database-driven web site using PHP & MySQL.
This book covers everything from installing PHP & MySQL under Windows, Linux, and Mac through to building a live web-based content management system.
While this is essentially a beginner's book, it also covers more advanced topics such as the storage of binary data in MySQL, and cookies and sessions in PHP. It comes complete with a set of handy reference guides for PHP & MySQL that include:
- MySQL syntax
- MySQL functions
- MysQL column types
- PHP functions for working with MySQL
Books with free ebook downloads available Free PHP & MySQL: Novice to Ninja
- Paperback: 481 pages
- Publisher: SitePoint; Fifth Edition edition (May 15, 2012)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0987153080
- ISBN-13: 978-0987153081
- Product Dimensions: 1.1 x 7 x 8.9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Free PHP & MySQL: Novice to Ninja
First to answer the obvious question; will this book turn you into a PHP and MySQL ninja? Well, no. That's not in any way to say that it's a bad book just that it's being oversold by the title. What it will do is give you a solid grounding in both PHP and MySQL in a readable and easy to digest manner. Perhaps a more accurate title would be something like "PHP and MySQL: Yutz to User" though that doesn't have quite the same ring to it!
Anyway, with that gripe out of the way onto the book. The contents are pretty much as you would expect; a guide to installation, an introduction to using the technologies and then a project based approach to using the PHP and MySQL in anger. Coverage of MySQL is, I think, somewhat more comprehensive than that of PHP but given that it is a much more compact and focused piece of software that is only to be expected. You do get good coverage of some of the more useful and important parts of PHP such as regular expressions and session management along with the basics and also a rather nice chapter on structured programming. I particularly appreciated the fact that object oriented programmed wasn't put forward as the one true way for building structured software, as it so often is, and that procedural programming with a library of functions got a look in. It's personal bias I know but for object oriented programming I prefer to use a language designed in an OO manner from the ground up. On the MySQL side you get pretty much everything you might need from a primer in relational database design up to some fairly advanced areas such as database replication and backed up with appendices of MySQL syntax and functions. There's no similar appendix of PHP syntax and functions, but as PHP runs to thousands of functions it's no great surprise.
I obtained a copy of PHP & MySQL, 5th edition, because I have taken over support for a Wordpress/MySQL website with phpAdmin installed. I am a desktop developer, so I hoped this book would give be a jump-start to understand my server environment. I was not disappointed.
Kevin Yanks communicates his content clearly, without any fluff. I have been programming for many decades, but I could barely spell PHP. Kevin's explanation using example after example made picking up the basic syntax a breeze. There were a couple of ideas that I had to re-read to get the real gist, but I congratulate Kevin on his commitment to simplicity. As a writer and instructor myself, I give him big kudos for adding complexity in small, incremental steps.
One of his most complex topics is Regular Expressions. This is an area that becomes quite obtuse very quickly. I am a passable novice at RegExes, and I admit I had to read some pages a couple of times, but I learned a lot! Great job, Kevin.
PHP & MySQL spends a lot of time on MySQL, as it should. Relational databases are pervasive, but they are also rife with areas of difficulties: not the least of which is the SQL language itself. Kevin does an excellent job of explaining MySQL installation, Administration, and common Functions and Queries.
Some reviewers have said this is not a book for total beginners. This may be true: a total beginner may not understand what a for-loop is, or when to use it. But the book's preface clearly states: "This book is aimed at intermediate and advanced web designers..." For anyone with a knowledge of one or two programming languages, and some HTML, this book should not be a major challenge.