Practical PHP and Mysql: Building Eight Dynamic Web Applications (Negus Live Linux)

Alot of books based on learning PHP and MySQL give you a load of facts and a bunch of random examples. In this book, however, the concept is too learn by doing, so as you build all the projects, you learn more and more about PHP.

Unfortunately, i do not have the book with me so i can not confirm what previous posts says about the CSS examples not being present, but i am quite sure that there is a generic CSS file at the back of the book, which works for ALL of the projects.

As for some of the scripts not working, i assume that this is due too their version of PHP or MySQL, and yes, this could be considered a fault in the book.

Overall however, i found this a great book, with 8 great, practical examples

Wait for a reprint before buying this book (2/2 people found this helpful)

Although this is a good book, it does have major problems.

The code in the book contains many errors and if you, like me, go through each chapter and type in the code that is printed in the book, you will not get a working application. You could just copy the files on the CDROM and use those if you are fine with just copying and pasting bits of code.

To overcome this I decided to copy all the PHP files from the CDROM to my hard drive so that I could compare the source in the book to the actual files and make corrections to the files I created. As I have some programming experience in Perl (similar to PHP) I could spot mistakes and this did help a bit.

My advice would be to wait for a reprint with most of the coding errors removed unless you do not mind debugging the code from the book or comparing it to the source files.

Apart from the annoying errors, the example applications in the book will help you understand how to build your own web applications. The way the book is written and structured is very nice.

The overall impression the book leaves me with is that it needed to go to the publisher before it was thoroughly checked.

This book should be withdrawn (2/2 people found this helpful)

If it were a car this book would have been recalled for safety reasons. There are so many things wrong with it.

The first project is a weblog - first mistake is that the sample data tables are written wrong. Then I find a whole section of CSS code is missing so I have no idea how make my example look like the book. Then I see the screenshot of my example page has more links in it than are available in the code shown in the book. This is only four pages into the chapter.

If there were updates online or source code on the CD then it would be bareable since the concept of this book is great. The CD is useless unless you want to run Ubuntu linux and code within that environment. I have setup a separate LAMP server and access it through my Windows PC. In this instance there is no access to the source code at all.

This is a major disappointment since the sample projects are very good examples but it too much hard work filling in the gaps without progressing with real knowledge of PHP/MySQL.

Even if fixed this book is not for a total beginner. Thats a good thing, though, since there are many beginner books but not many "second" books. If it has a new edition with all the errors fixed this will make an excellent second book on PHP/MySQL but right now it is just not in a state where it should be available for sale.

unusable (4/4 people found this helpful)

Great concept - lousy execution.
The book is well laid out and has a good balance between screen shots, code and explanation. It also contains a whole development environment on the cd and supplies (nearly) all of the code contained in the book. And this makes it all the more frustrating. Because, unless you are an expert in this field (and presumably if you are you would not need this book), the book is unusable (except as a source of heat once it is set alight) beyond the first application (building a weblog).

The first third is FULL to the brim with substantial code errors (not to mention typos and CSS errors). As mentioned, I managed to work around the errors in the first application, but within a couple of pages of the second there were so many that I had to give up on this, and move onto the third (building a shopping cart). Here I did get to the end of the chapter and most of the code seemed to work, but enough of it did not for the application to be unusable. In fact, one of the files that should be supplied (register.php) is missing, and not just from the disk - there is no mention of it anywhere in the book! And it definitely should exist, because it is referenced in the text as a link.

So in the first 3 applications, 2 cannot be built and 1 can only if you are able to muddle through the code and fix the errors - not really good enough.

If online support was available to clean up the code and make the book fit for purpose then the above could (perhaps) be tolerated, but it is not.

Wasted too much time already - off to find a replacement. Pants.

DON'T BUY THIS BOOK - WASTE OF MONEY (2/2 people found this helpful)

What a total waste of time..... I'm on the first application in this book and already the code is wrong, now i'm not just talking about a typo error, there is whole lines of code missing..... for example on the header.php file in the blog application, your supposed to have a home link, a categories link, and a login link, and only the home link is there....

Go to Jono Bacons website and look at the comments made about this book... there is no errata and he refuses to make any comment to what people have wrote, emails are not being returned either.

Ahhhh this book is really winding me up! I can't carry on with this review anymore.

DON'T BUY THIS CRAP....

Practical PHP and Mysql: Building Eight Dynamic Web Applications (Negus Live Linux)

Jono Bacon

Reader Reviews:

Good book for learning PHP and MySQL (1/2 people found this helpful)

Wait for a reprint before buying this book (2/2 people found this helpful)

This book should be withdrawn (2/2 people found this helpful)

unusable (4/4 people found this helpful)

DON'T BUY THIS BOOK - WASTE OF MONEY (2/2 people found this helpful)

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