Murach's PHP and MYSQL: Training & Reference

I have to say I love the Murach's style and organization, along with the clear, easy to understand writing. The organization of having descriptive text on the left side of the seam, and code samples and bullet points on the right side is perfect for both the newbie and the experienced alike, both as a step by step tutorial, and as a very convenient reference for professionals.

Great book! I liked that it's not verbose. The author gets straight to the point. Good beginner PHP reference. I liked its layout: text on the left, code, tables, and summaries on the right. It made it very easy to search for stuff. It's a good book to have if you are a computer scientist.

It's quite in-depth yet easy to read. The expanded web security section is very useful. My only beef with it is that the object-oriented aspects of using PHP to handle MySQL databases (not the part on classes in general) only covers making connections and using prepared statements. It doesn't talk about taking record sets and loading them into objects that have their own functions and private or protected data members (e.g., effectively using PDO::FETCHINTO-based development), rather than just using multidimensional arrays for foreach loop traversal and then procedural code to do more with the instantiated objects. However, that's poorly documented on the php.net site either, so maybe the authors should get a pass.

I'm not even halfway through this book yet and feel confident that I can begin building a small eCommerce site from scratch. Brings you up to speed very quickly. Easy for beginners to understand and apply.

Awesome Book. Would recommend for anyone learning any of the languages they have books for. I own their PHP/MySQL, HTML5/CSS3, and their Javascript/JQuery books. Cannot say enough good about them. Murach's is definitely the way to go.

It's great. I got it as a text book for school and it has been extremely helpful!

I'm not sure yet about this book, although I'm only about 1/5 through it. It dives right into some very challenging material, but then again, I think PHP is going to be a lot more challenging than any version of HTML or CSS. With material this difficult, I'd like to see more examples and references back to previous lessons before I'm expected to delve into the exercises. I will update this review as I work through this book. **Update**: after working through the first 1/3 of this book, I've determined I don't like it at all. The first few exercises dive in to so much that wasn't previously covered, that it leaves the truly inquisitive student in a grand state of wonderment. What did I just do? How does this really work? What were some of the operators and variables I just used and how did they fit into the application? Furthermore, if some of the exercises don't work for you, there's no "final" version you can check against your own. Also, the book dives right into created applications. Why not just begin with how simple Includes work, and simple GET/POST exercises. The book doesn't allow the student to get his feet wet before putting a few skills together into an actual project or application. There are a great number of web resources for learning PHP; but I'm still looking for the best beginner's text. This is definitely not it.

I like the book so far! Great tutorials! Gotta have some real-world projects to be able to grasp the concepts, and this book delivers.

All around great book. The way the information is presented it reads fluently for a great learning experience.

This is a great PHP book, although not for complete beginners. The new knowledge I acquired with it enabled me to drastically improve an existing PHP application.

Il libro è un corso di PHP e MySQL (usati con XAMPP, HTML, CSS e NetBeans IDE). Non tratta neanche brevemente l'HTLM e il CSS, anche se li utilizza e ne fornisce il codice. Dal sito si può scaricare il software utilizzato nel libro. L'ho provato e funziona. Procede per gradi ma in maniera non organica sui tutti gli argomenti: alcune parti che non lo richiederebbero sono spiegate troppo dettagliatamente e risultano prolisse; altre parti più complesse, sono spiegate in maniera non chiara. Ad esempio della programmazione ad oggetti viene spiegato il come, ma non il perché. Anche gli esempi ed il codice mi sembrano scritti in modo poco lineare. Trattata abbastanza bene la parte relativa al MySQL.

This is probably one of the best written and organised books I've read on the subject of web development. This book will get you well on your way without having to constantly reference several other books.

Ich habe nun schon eine Vielzahl von Büchern aus dieser Buchreihe und keines davon hat mich bisher enttäuscht. Es wird auch sicher nicht das Letzte sein. Guter Schreibstil, anspruchsvolle und praxisorientierte Beispiele und Aufgaben. Was will man mehr.