Book Review: PHP 5 in Practice

Intermediate level book for active php programmers. From the book’s cover:

‘Recipes and solutions for PHP programmers’

One of the authors is senior programmer at Digg (a big nerd hang out,) so you know this book is going to cover the latest php techniques …

This is a very good book, actually one of the best recipe books I’ve read period.

You can tell that the authors are still actively writing code – you can feel it as you read the chapters. The book list a series of techniques (they call recipes) that are commonly needed by php programmers.

Some example recipes:

• How to Sort Arrays
• Send HTTP headers
• Encode a string for use in a URL

… this book is packed with all kinds of php goodies. I never list too much from a book … you can easily look it up online.

😉

THE ‘QUICK HITS’

After a brief introduction, each chapter provides a bunch of micro-tips related to the recipes discussed in the chapter. They call these tips: ‘quick hits’.

I found the ‘quick hits’ to be very useful because they provide a very concise and easy to read look at aspects of the php language. I can see myself referring to this book often just because of the ‘quick hits’.

I actually keep this book nearby to flip through once and a while, just to give me ideas. It has already helped on a php 5 project I am working on.

CONCLUSION

This I think is a great book. It has lots of practical information and is without a doubt, one of the most useful books on programming I’ve read – and I’m talking all languages.

Buy the book if you work with PHP or planning to.

Stefan Mischook

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