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Product Description
Product Description
Wicked Cool PHP capitalizes on the success of the "Wicked Cool" series from No Starch Press. Rather than focus on the basics of the language, Wicked Cool PHP provides (and explains) PHP scripts that can be implemented immediately to simplify webmasters' lives. These include unique scripts for processing credit cards, checking for valid email addresses, templating, overriding PHP's default settings, and serving dynamic images and text. Readers will also find extensive sections on working with forms, words, and files; ways to harden PHP by closing common security holes; and instructions for keeping data and transactions secure. By exploring working code, readers learn how to customize their webserver's behavior, prevent spammers from adding annoying comments, scrape information from other web sites, and much more. This is a book that's sure to appeal to PHP programmers who have been there and done that and who want a book that delivers meaty content, not only promise.
About the Author
William Steinmetz is the author of LAN Party: Hosting the Ultimate Frag Fest (Wiley) and co-author of Paint Shop Pro for Dummies (IDG). He is the webmaster and editor of StarCityGames.com, where traffic has quadrupled as a result of the changes he designed and implemented, all using PHP.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The most positive characteristic of this book is its accessibility: it's the only PHP book that I have read without frequently thinking "what on earth do they mean by that?" The writing style is not formal - in fact, it's too flippant on occasions - but it's well written and easy to follow. It succeeded in getting me to understand one or two functions that had previously been confusing and the introduction to regular expressions would make a good grounding before tackling more advanced regex tasks. I really liked the "What can go wrong" segments: every programming book should have such information separated out like that.
The structure is slightly less well-ordered, though: it has a habit of referring to previous or forthcoming information, so you will be flicking back and forth at times. The incomplete code archive was a big annoyance: you will face some careful typing when you want to try out the examples for yourself. This is a second edition, so the archive should have been sorted by now.
I was disappointed with its incomplete treatment of most of its topics; more than is usual for this type of book. I was really interested in the details of processing form content into e-mails, but this important core function of any website gets little more than brief coverage of validation. The first chapter is titled "The Scripts That Every PHP Programmer Wants to Know", but it missed a lot that could and should have been included. Maybe it was a bit too ambitious in its aims for a book of this modest size, and it left me with a lot of unanswered questions. Although, I must point out that the other books in my possession didn't answer them very well either. I would also like to have seen an explanation of the use of single and double quotes, which I wanted to know: the authors have used both types but never clarified why.
Aside from my caveats, the good points are just about enough for me to recommend this book as an addition to a collection of PHP books. As a supplement to other books, it did give me a few useful snippets that I had not seen elsewhere. Just don't pick this up as your first PHP book or expect it to solve all of the scripting problems that you might expect it to.
The structure is slightly less well-ordered, though: it has a habit of referring to previous or forthcoming information, so you will be flicking back and forth at times. The incomplete code archive was a big annoyance: you will face some careful typing when you want to try out the examples for yourself. This is a second edition, so the archive should have been sorted by now.
I was disappointed with its incomplete treatment of most of its topics; more than is usual for this type of book. I was really interested in the details of processing form content into e-mails, but this important core function of any website gets little more than brief coverage of validation. The first chapter is titled "The Scripts That Every PHP Programmer Wants to Know", but it missed a lot that could and should have been included. Maybe it was a bit too ambitious in its aims for a book of this modest size, and it left me with a lot of unanswered questions. Although, I must point out that the other books in my possession didn't answer them very well either. I would also like to have seen an explanation of the use of single and double quotes, which I wanted to know: the authors have used both types but never clarified why.
Aside from my caveats, the good points are just about enough for me to recommend this book as an addition to a collection of PHP books. As a supplement to other books, it did give me a few useful snippets that I had not seen elsewhere. Just don't pick this up as your first PHP book or expect it to solve all of the scripting problems that you might expect it to.
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
I have read (or, more usually, part-read!) a few books on PHP and this one is one of the easiest to work with. Some other books I own have been criticised for containing code errors in the examples they provide, whereas the code in this book often seems to achieve the same end results with code that is both shorter and easier to comprehend. With a very small amount of PHP practice under my belt I have found myself smiling as I flip to a new page and see yet another topic I was hoping would be covered. It's an excellent book for anyone intending to do some real world PHP coding and has lots of casually delivered, but invaluable, tips and insights. Recommended.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
as the previous reviewer said this is not a first php book. However as a second php book it is really good. The book is packed full of useful examples of code and the writer has a nice easy writing style - not too much detail, but enough to get every example to work and understood to a good level.
Great Job.
Great Job.
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