The php part is ok. The mysql, cookie, security chapters are junk. I guess
even the writer does not know what he is talking about. I do not know where
he pulled those chapters from. As a consequence, I had to go to mysql online
tutorial to learn mysql.

My background is computer science so I donot think other readers can understand what the author is talking about.

I am a long time programmer (15 years) and wanted to start a new project based on PHP scripts and a MySQL database. This book was quite helpfull in getting me started. It wasn't necessary to read the entire book. I read those sections that were signifigant to what I needed. My background is very heavy on Enterprise products like SAS, Oracle, and DB2. The project I was working on didn't require such huge resources so I picked up this book and setup a linux box with a LAMP configuration to get started.

The book is a good starting point. Paticularly important is the interaction between HTML and MySQL in PHP. You can get a lot of information on just PHP from the PHP documenation. The best value I got out of the book was learning about the interaction between PHP and MySQL.

Book was received in a timely manor and condition as promised.

I knew I had picked up the wrong book when, in the first or second chapter, the authors said that variable types didn't matter and that they wouldn't bother covering them until late in the book. Admittedly, I can see their point, but the way the statement was written made it apparent that they were aiming this at HTML authors and other people with little to no real programming experience. If you want to pick up the PHP language and already have experience with a real programming language or two, you'd be better off picking up something else. If not, this book actually would be a good way to get started.

Update: Now that I've chewed through a little more of the book, I would no longer recommend this book to even a beginner. Uncommented, and hard to read examples that make poor use of whitespace dominate later chapters. The examples aren't the 3-4 page long beasts you find in some C or Java books, but nonetheless, this book does not demonstrate good coding practices, and should not be used by a new programmer to pick up the ropes.

I have enjoyed this book and it is very well written with enough to get you going. However there are a lot of typos in the book. Most of them are easily ignorable such as a space omitted in an unimportant area or a simple hit of the wrong key. Generally you can ignore it and there is no problem with understanding the material.

Although Table 8-5 is pretty much useless (I haven't checked others). Just by making a simple string I found 4 mistakes and had to resort to web resources to get the right date strings.

Overall I wouldn't base my decision on that alone as it is a good book. I'm not unfamiliar with programing so learning the php was just learning the syntax. I however had never touched mySQL in my life before this and the book made it quite painfully clear.

If you want to do "something" using PHP and MySQL, and you don't know anything about these tools, this book will help you a lot!
You will find everything you need to a quick start.

I recommend it !

I like this book because it was an easy step by step introduction to PHP and MySQL. New features are introduced one at a time so I didn't feel overloaded. This book also has many demonstrations using real life examples of situations where PHP and MySQL would be used. This book also shows how to properly setup Apache, PHP and MySQL. What I really admired was the easy to read language of this book that makes it useful both as a reference and as a book to read straight through.

I thought the book was biased towards Windows, as the setup section goes in depth on the Windows environment. I would have preferred a more even handed approach that also covers the Unix-like environment.

The book also uses some special PHP modules, PHP Smarty and PHP Pear. Personally, I was turned off by the book's use of these. I would have preferred that the book use entirely standard PHP. Considering that this is an introductory book, I think using object oriented modules is too much.

It's a good basic overview, but the errors in the code snips are just too frustrating. I bought it because it was recently published (2006). But trying to get PEAR to work (DB.php has been superseded by MDB2.php) and even the simple form were exercises in futility.

If you do use it get an AMP package (google: Uniform Server) and skip the install section. You'd think O'Reilly could include and AMP stack on a CD in the book and use that 20 pages for another exercise

There are two problems with this book. First of all it's filled with typos, both in the text and in the sample codes. The typos in the text made me laugh (its vs. it's type stuff), those in the codes made me cry. There are entire lines in some codes or screen ouputs that clearly do not belong there (take a look at page 126, about a third of the way into the page there's a line that goes --> ,"Aaron Weber"); <-- . Clearly, this line serves no purpose on its own and it was accidentally cut and paste from the end of the following line. Just too many typos, within 10 pages I had lost my confidence in this book. Secondly (and more importantly), this is NOT a beginner's book. It attempts to educate the reader on PHP and MySQL, and fails at both. For instance, the book never once mentions something as basic as the difference between echo and print in PHP. Then there's the instructions on installing phpMyAdmin on page 140, specifically item 6. I know nothing about MySQL so I have no idea how to "set the hostname, etc. of my database in the config.inc.php file". Thanks for nothing. In summary, if you're a beginner, you may think you've learned PHP and MySQL upon reading this book, and in fact you'll just be confused, and if you already know them, then why on earth would you use this simplistic book? I've returned my copy for a refund. By the way, I saw that one of the positive reviews below was posted on the book's blog site. Let's see if mine makes it.

I returned the book for a refund. The book contains too many errors! The installation instructions in Chapter 2, contain so many errors that I lost all confidence in the remaining sections. If you purchase this book, good luck getting past the installation...

I'd give it 0 stars if I could!

Do you want to know how to create dynamic web sites? If you do, then this book is for you. Authors Michele E. Davis and Jon A. Phillips, have done an outstanding job of writing a book that shows you how programming, templating and databases work.

Davis and Phillips, begin by showing you how PHP handles simple text, and then moves on to basic decision making. Then, the authors discuss expressions and statements. Next, they introduce you to some basic database structure so that you have an understanding of databases. They also show you how to connect to the MySQL database using the client tools that come with MySQL. The authors then continue by showing you how to connect to a MySQL server from PHP. Then, they show you how to start working on some of the more common tasks that you'll perform when writing PHP programs. Next, the authors show you how to perform more complicated database tasks from PHP. They also explore your options for validating form data before a form submission. Finally, the authors arm you with numerous resources that can help you during your PHP and MySQL journey.

This most excellent book will walk you through many challenges. Perhaps more importantly, you'll be able to design new features and let you imagination run wild!

This book delivers on it's title "Learning PHP & MySQL". I find it helpful to have a range of books on PHP. This is a book I'll go to when I need to go back to basics. I recommend it for anyone looking to take the step from static HTML to a database driven website.

If you have some experience in web development but are new to these technologies, this is a fine, clear, efficient primer to absorb and springboard from.

--Update: There are a lot of errors in this book, noted elsewhere by many(see publisher's website). The concepts are sound, the writing is clear, but this first edition really is quite flawed, sadly.

I found this book to be seriously flawed in the following ways:
1.) The installation instructions contain many errors from bad URLs, to steps out of order, to downright errors and confusion surrounding which version of PHP is actually being installed and how. You would be much better off Googling for a tutorial on the subject.
2.) Certain topics are mentioned, but then totally glossed over. I am left wondering if a lot of information wasn't cut from the book without removing the "teasers" that promise coverage of a topic.
Simply put, I just do not believe a technical editor ever read through this book, and it is definitely not up to O'Reilly's typically high standards.
I hope this helps.

I am a newbie to MySQL/PHP. Truly. Many reviews of the O'Reilly series clearly have extensive backgrounds in programming. I do not: I had a little HTML under my belt, that's it.

The book does do an excellent job explaining what Apache, MySQL, and PHP are and how they interact. The author does a good job explaining PHP syntax and MYSQL as well. But, if you pick this book up as a beginner with a specific project in mind, you may have trouble figuring out how what your are learning relates to what you want to do. That's the joy of being a newbie. Using this book along with something like the Nutshell books, which are reference books, will speed things along.

The installation section in this book--for the true beginner--was a huge let down. This section assumes knowledge that many people who are diving headlong into this may not know. If your Apache installation goes wrong (and mine did), the author simply tells you to redo the section. I quintuple checked my configuration instructions: everything was as instructed. And you get PHP and MySQL to work if Apache isn't working.

Ultimately, I tried both of the all-in-one installations of AMP: XAMPP and wampserver, which preserved my ability to proceed forward.

Learning PHP & MySQL is a detailed guide to building a database-driven web site. The authors do an excellent job of starting from the beginning, assuming no prior knowledge of either PHP or MySQL. In fact the only assumptions that the authors seem to make is that you have a very basic understanding of HTML. After working through the book and the detailed examples anyone should be able to write basic programs the meet common needs as well as create and interface with a MySQL database. Some of the programming areas covered in the book include decision making, working with arrays, using functions, database design fundamentals (missing in most books), getting PHP to talk to MySQL, modifying objects and data, and security. At the end of the book the reader ends up with a complete example application.

The authors section on creating a MySQL database and working with it is excellent and truly reads easy to those not familiar with MySQL at all. This is the best introductory text for implementing PHP and MySQL that I have read. If you are already familiar with both PHP and MySQL then you will probably prefer another text but if you are new to them this is a text you should seriously consider as one of the best teaching tools and first forays into the field. Learning PHP & MySQL is very highly recommended to anyone wanting to learn the basics of using this very powerful combination to create a database-driven dynamic website.

This book forms a decent introduction to the topic, but it's annoying when you have to figure out what the authors MEANT to say when code examples don't work as advertised. The worst case I've seen is on page 183, where the code is so far off from what they meant it to be, if you run it, it produces a blank page. There's no output. I managed to figure out what they MEANT to say, and to make it work, but I shouldn't have to do that. There are plenty of other spots where I've been scratching my head trying to figure out what they meant, where things were not sufficiently explained, or where things didn't work as described. It's frustrating and time-consuming for a beginner to the topic like me.

'Learning PHP and MySQL' by Michele Davis is another Barry Bonds-esque home run of a book in the "Learning" series of O'Reilly gems. Covering a nice amount of 350 pages, the book is broken up into 17 Chapters:

01. Dynamic Content on the Web
02. Installation of PHP
03. Basics of PHP
04. Intermediate PHP
05. PHP Functions
06. Arrays
07. Database Basics
08. Using MySQL
09. PHP > MySQL communication
10. Forms
11. Practical PHP
12. Modifying MySQL Objects and PHP Data
13. Cookies, Sessions, Access Control
14. Security
15. Validation & Error Handling
16. Sample Apps
17. Wrapping Up

I like any book that has the word 'Learning' on the cover to not be too long, the writing to be clear and easy to understand, with plenty of pictures and screenshots so I can easily understand the concepts presented within. This book does all that and a whole lot more.

PHP has been around for some time in its role as the "other child" next to ASP and JSP. With this book by your side, you will soon learn that this technology has just as much to offer as the other 2 prevailing ones, except this one is open source and FREE (F-R-E BABY)!!

Support your open source developers out there and learn that you don't have to turn to Microsoft or Sun in order to produce a web site that is feature full and packed at the same time!!

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

This book will take you from a basic understanding of creating static HTML to an elementary but quite nifty practical knowledge of serving up dynamic Web pages on your own.

Chapters 1-6 take you through basic orientation, the installation of Apache, PHP and MySQL, followed by an intro to PHP statements.

Chapters 7-9 introduce database concepts and step you through getting PHP to talk to MySQL.

Chapters 10-17 begin the process of creating forms and other components of Web sites and applications following all the way through to integrating some sample applications.

Each step and procedure has ample code printouts, logic diagrams and output screenshots. Review of knowledge was done well. One feature of this book you should take advantage of is the question section at the end of each chapter. I usually find these irritating and skip them because often the questions don't reinforce learning and no answers are provided. The questions in this book *are* well constructed and the answers *are* provided.

Quibbles: Be prepared for a bit of keyboarding. O'Reilly provides a site for the book but the example code is not available for download. Your first bout of keying code may end in failure because the authors forget that in the first examples (the most important ones for an absolute beginner!) they need to recall being a beginner. They ask you to write out and save "a simple HTML document." I did that. The example did not work on the server. I checked this, I checked that, I re-typed the code, I typed other examples. No luck. Then I stumbled onto changing the extension of my .html file to .php and all was well. See my point?