Looking for PHP book suggestions...

[Shawn Wilson]

I have been an HTML guy for 8 years or so, but only last year started
working with PHP. I dabbled in Perl and then moved to PHP after completing
a couple projects in Perl. I'm thankful I did that, as I'm sure you all
know.

I've got a pretty common working knowlege of PHP and using it with mySQL. I
can do most anything I need to do, but I learn new things by Google'ing or
using PHP.NET and I'd like to learn some better practices and get away from
what I'm sure are newbie practices. I've been learning to acomplish one
specific task at a time, and I'd like a more rounded education on best
practices.

I've only recently started using arrays instead of lots of seperate
variables for example, and I'm sure there are more things (like hashes?)
that would move me more toward a seasoned programmer and away from being a
newbie.

There are hundreds of PHP books out there, and I've ordered a couple, but
I'm looking for suggestions. First, on whether I should touch PHP5 at this
point given the fact that it probably won't be on my client's servers? Or
should I focus on PHP4 for now and then move on to PHP5 at some later date
when I'm ready and the world is more ready?

What I don't want to do is to learn a ton of new ways of doing things with
PHP5 and not be able to use any of it so maybe I've answered my own
question.

Please, any suggetions would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

----------------
Shawn Wilson

[ng]

This is a link I found by a very good PHP author - this one is on
Version 4, and he also wrote one on Version 5. I would start with this
one, considering it's free, and more relevant right now than V5.

Tom

http://apress.com/free/content/Progr...tionToPHP4.pdf

Shawn Wilson wrote:

I have been an HTML guy for 8 years or so, but only last year started
working with PHP. I dabbled in Perl and then moved to PHP after completing
a couple projects in Perl. I'm thankful I did that, as I'm sure you all
know.

I've got a pretty common working knowlege of PHP and using it with mySQL. I
can do most anything I need to do, but I learn new things by Google'ing or
using PHP.NET and I'd like to learn some better practices and get away from
what I'm sure are newbie practices. I've been learning to acomplish one
specific task at a time, and I'd like a more rounded education on best
practices.

I've only recently started using arrays instead of lots of seperate
variables for example, and I'm sure there are more things (like hashes?)
that would move me more toward a seasoned programmer and away from being a
newbie.

There are hundreds of PHP books out there, and I've ordered a couple, but
I'm looking for suggestions. First, on whether I should touch PHP5 at this
point given the fact that it probably won't be on my client's servers? Or
should I focus on PHP4 for now and then move on to PHP5 at some later date
when I'm ready and the world is more ready?

What I don't want to do is to learn a ton of new ways of doing things with
PHP5 and not be able to use any of it so maybe I've answered my own
question.

Please, any suggetions would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

----------------
Shawn Wilson

[Rich]

In article <Sv********************@fe06.news.easynews.com>, Shawn Wilson says...

I have been an HTML guy for 8 years or so, but only last year started
working with PHP. I dabbled in Perl and then moved to PHP after completing
a couple projects in Perl. I'm thankful I did that, as I'm sure you all
know.

I've got a pretty common working knowlege of PHP and using it with mySQL. I
can do most anything I need to do, but I learn new things by Google'ing or
using PHP.NET and I'd like to learn some better practices and get away from
what I'm sure are newbie practices. I've been learning to acomplish one
specific task at a time, and I'd like a more rounded education on best
practices.

I've only recently started using arrays instead of lots of seperate
variables for example, and I'm sure there are more things (like hashes?)
that would move me more toward a seasoned programmer and away from being a
newbie.

There are hundreds of PHP books out there, and I've ordered a couple, but
I'm looking for suggestions. First, on whether I should touch PHP5 at this
point given the fact that it probably won't be on my client's servers? Or
should I focus on PHP4 for now and then move on to PHP5 at some later date
when I'm ready and the world is more ready?

What I don't want to do is to learn a ton of new ways of doing things with
PHP5 and not be able to use any of it so maybe I've answered my own
question.

Please, any suggetions would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

----------------
Shawn Wilson

Probably lots of PHP and Perl related books to weed through, but I've had
descent luck with the O'Reilly and Wrox prints. For PHP I've used O'Reilly's
"PHP Programming" and "PHP Cookbook" which cover v4 pretty well. Sometimes the
"cookbooks" give exercises that are a little more challenging that your average
introductory book.

If you have an interest in PHP v5 though, it might be worth installing that on
your own test system and check through the changes and improvements they've
made. Might be tough getting a current and accurate book since it's still under
development.

Rich
--
Newsguy.Com - 30 GB - $14.95 / month
Complete posts and long retention times
http://newsguy.com/overview.htm

[R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah]

Shawn Wilson wrote:
<snip>

There are hundreds of PHP books out there, and I've ordered a couple, but
I'm looking for suggestions. First, on whether I should touch PHP5 at this
point given the fact that it probably won't be on my client's servers? Or
should I focus on PHP4 for now and then move on to PHP5 at some later date
when I'm ready and the world is more ready?

You got to be ready for PHP6, IMHO. Probably this might help a bit
<news:11**********************@g43g2000cwa.googleg roups.com> (
http://groups.google.com/group/comp....55713f1345dff1 )

FWIW, my choice is Advanced PHP Programming, by George Schlossnagle
and High Performance MySQL, by Jeremy D. Zawodny et al.

--
<?php echo 'Just another PHP saint'; ?>
Email: rrjanbiah-at-Y!com Blog: http://rajeshanbiah.blogspot.com

[Aidan]

"R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah" <ng**********@rediffmail.com> wrote in message
news:11**********************@z14g2000cwz.googlegr oups.com...

Shawn Wilson wrote:
<snip>

There are hundreds of PHP books out there, and I've ordered a couple, but
I'm looking for suggestions. First, on whether I should touch PHP5 at
this
point given the fact that it probably won't be on my client's servers?
Or
should I focus on PHP4 for now and then move on to PHP5 at some later
date
when I'm ready and the world is more ready?

You got to be ready for PHP6, IMHO.

Are you a troll, or were you just man-handled by one?

<*SNIP*>

[Horst TellioÄŸlu]

Shawn Wilson wrote:

There are hundreds of PHP books out there, and I've ordered a couple, but
I'm looking for suggestions.
The best book I have seen so far is "PHP 5 Objects, Patterns, and Practice"
by Matt Zandstra. It focuses on programming instead of language features.
What I don't want to do is to learn a ton of new ways of doing things with
PHP5 and not be able to use any of it so maybe I've answered my own
question.

I am working with PHP 5 for over one and a half years now with great success
and can only recommend it. If you want to do object oriented programming
and I think one should, except maybe for the tiniest projects, PHP 5 is the
only way to go.
Regards,
Horst

[Horst TellioÄŸlu]

Rich wrote:

If you have an interest in PHP v5 though, it might be worth installing
that on your own test system and check through the changes and
improvements they've made. Might be tough getting a current and accurate
book since it's still under development.

Well I bought "Upgrading to PHP 5" by Adam Trachtenberg almost a year ago
and it seems very accurate to me. I can recommend it. The chapters on
iterators and streams were really helpful.
Regards,
Horst