[thelist] PHP learning tools

[Burhan Khalid]

Joel D Canfield wrote:
> Decided to get serious about PHP. Looking for a Palm version of the PHP
> docs, and one or two excellent books on PHP (with or without MySQL)

I've owned two PHP books -- Secure PHP Development[1] and the famous PHP 
and MySQL Web Development Second Edition[2] (its now got a third edition 
in the works).

I was already familiar with PHP before I purchased these books, so I was 
really looking for an in-depth reference. Unfortunately, I didn't find 
such a thing in either of them.  The PHP and MySQL Web Development is 
good if you are a novice/intermediate programmer and would like to learn 
how to create different types of PHP applications (for example, mailing 
list managers, forums, etc.) The book really tries to squeeze a lot in 
there.  I found the best part of the book to be the section on Web 
Services and the Appendix (which has guides on how to setup a PHP dev. 
environment).

The Secure PHP Development is a good book if you want hints on how to 
use classes and reuse your code. Although the readability of the book is 
hampered by the long pages of code, its a good way to see how classes 
can be used to ease development.  This was one of the few books that had 
examples of command line php applications (such as a BIND domain 
manager) ... quite handy.  It even has a section regarding Best 
Practices in PHP.

> Can't find the PDBPRC of the manual, though php.net says it exists.
> Searched thelist back six months and don't see any definitive statements
> re: good general books on PHP.

You can download the .pdb format of the php manual from memoware.com[3]


[1] http://tinyurl.com/6vtb3
[2] http://tinyurl.com/4y7qa
[3] http://tinyurl.com/3qv2z