Doug’s Book Review

If you need to go beyond the basic syntax and mechanics of PHP, and learn more about the the mechanisms that make PHP programs work, you will find this book useful. I do not recommend this as your first PHP reference book. I do find it a helpful reference.

I have not yet read the entire book; I am going through it on an as-needed basis. I will be updating this post as I read more.

What I Like About PHP in a Nutshell

This book provides necessary detail about a variety PHP programming topics, for example PHP5 objects and session management. After reading a chapter, you will have sufficient understanding of the topic to start working with more advanced PHP features. I like the depth to which subjects are covered.

 

The book is fairly well written, and after reading a couple of chapters, I feel I am developing a good understanding of how to work with PHP at a higher level, i.e. how to design structures and mechanisms, rather than line-by-line coding. For the latter, see Programming PHP 2nd Edition.

What I Find Lacking About PHP in a Nutshell

The writing could be more succinct. It is like a good second draft that needs a bit more editing. I guess this is the price we pay for the quick march of technology, and having the books to keep us up to date before the technology goes obsolete. Still, I would have liked an editor to go over the text and tighten up the language in places.

 

Some of the examples don’t make a lot of sense. For example, in the chapter about object-oriented PHP, the author discusses the importance of private variables and public functions to access them, but the example shows a public variable and a private function which access it. This sort of thing happens more than once in the book. PHP Phrasebook seems to have much better and more practical examples.

Sometimes the content refers to subjects that are covered in another chapter. This is normal. However, these references lack context. Sometimes I feel that I should read the reference to which they refer (like maybe the whole chapter!) before I can fully understand what I am reading now.

Conclusion

This book is useful. If you only know the syntax and constructs of PHP, I really don’t think you will have enough to write solid software. This book helps supply that information. It is worth having on your bookshelf and I am glad to have it.
I did find it a bit of a disappointment, not really up to OReilly’s highest standard. Still, every bit helps, and I recommend this book with two qualifications: first, this should not be your first and only book on PHP. I recommend Programming PHP 2nd Edition to get you started. The second qualification is that there may be better books that cover the same material. If you know of one, please leave a comment.

Related Books

I have quite a few other books about PHP, which I have or will review as I use them. Here are the ones I have reviewed so far on this site:

• Programming PHP 2nd Edition
• PHP Phrasebook

Also, see this non-review post: A Broader Look at PHP

ISBN: 0596100671

 

Last Modified : October 18th, 2006
Filed under : Software Development
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