CodeIgniter 1.7 Professional Development [Paperback]

CodeIgniter 1.7 Professional Development, written by Adam Griffiths, claims that you will become a CodeIgniter expert with professional tools, techniques, and extended libraries. I would have to strongly agree with this.

This book consists of ten chapters of which I would describe none as `filler' chapters. Each covers fundamental web development topics in detail with little in the text in the way of obvious.

It opens with a Getting Started Chapter that comprehensively introduces the reader to the CodeIgniter framework with download and install instructions, MVC architecture overview, coding conventions and CodeIgniter specific files: helpers, plugins and libraries.

I found it interesting that the first core CodeIgniter class mentioned is the Benchmarking Class. This sets a precedent to the reader to consider monitoring their application execution time and memory consumption as they develop. Application speed and efficiency is usually something left for latter chapters involving heavy code refactoring to ensure your app is performant. I find it refreshing that benchmarking and unit testing is shown to the reader at the beginning.

Other core classes covered include the Input and Security Class (with XSS filtering), Email Class, File Upload Class, Image Manipulation Library, Pagination Class and the Session Class. All relevant classes in most applications.

Form Validation, Database Interaction, Application Security and User Authentication are heavily described in this book with the latter also covering Twitter oAuth and Facebook Connect. Two very important connections for any web application with detailed steps on each, from registration with these companies through to production coding examples. A real one stop guide.

Relevant topics is what most impresses me about this book. Nearly every section is something that will be required in most new web applications. This book touches on the most important CodeIgniter classes, which of course can all be read about in detail via the CodeIgniter User Guide. But this book brings these classes together with purpose, showing the reader via useful coding examples, `real world' uses for them.

With chapters devoted to opening your application to third parties via RESTful web services and extending CodeIgniter to perform custom tasks, this book has attractions to experienced CodeIgniter users who wish to take their application to the `next level'.

I would recommend this book for developers new to CodeIgniter and more experienced alike. It is written in a relaxed, easy-to-read style with quality coding examples which eases the reader through the content.

However, I would have perhaps liked the author to air his opinions on why CodeIgniter is his preferred framework of choice over say CakePHP, Zend, Joomla or Yii.

CodeIgniter 1.7 Professional Development is available in printed and eBook formats. Find our more via the official Packt Publishing website.

Disclosure: I have no association with Packt Publishing other than they contacted me to ask if I would review this book. I was provided with a hard copy of the book for review purposes with no obligation. No other payment or payment in kind was offered or requested.

Really helped me to understand and get started using codeigniter. You won't regret reading this, its an easy first step to learning the framework.

Decided that I needed a good book to get started with Code Igniter. This book is very easy to read/follow and covers the key aspects of development with Code Igniter. Also I contacted the author and he got back to me with a comprehensive answer to my question within twenty four hours. Would recommend this book to anyone.