PHP Solutions: Dynamic Web Design Made Easy - Softcover

Powers, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1430232498 ISBN 13: 9781430232490

Publisher: friendsofED, 2010

Synopsis

Book by Powers, David

About this title

From the Author

What made the first edition of "PHP Solutions" my most popular book was that I wrote it with PHP 5 in mind at a time when most websites were still hosted on PHP 4 servers. So, when friends of ED asked me to prepare a second edition, I thought it would be a simple task -- just remove the PHP 4 material, and add some new techniques. How wrong I was!

The decision to drop support for PHP 4 was liberating. I realized that some tasks, such as uploading files and creating thumbnails, could be much better handled by custom classes. I hadn't been able to do that in the first edition because classes in PHP 4 and PHP 5 are mutually incompatible. The classes break complex tasks into simple, easy-to-understand operations. Better still, all the code is project-neutral, so you can reuse the classes in other websites by writing no more than a dozen lines of code -- sometimes less.

Although the book retains the original structure of the first edition, all the code has been completely rewritten, making it cleaner and more efficient. Other new features include displaying the results of a news feed using SimpleXML and the Standard PHP Library (SPL). There's also detailed coverage of the date and time classes introduced in PHP 5.2 and 5.3. The chapter on working with multiple database tables has been expanded to explain how to implement foreign key constraints in InnoDB, the default storage engine in MySQL 5.5.

This new edition requires PHP 5.2 and MySQL 4.1 or later. The code won't work in earlier versions.

Please note that the example files for the book are now located on the main Apress website. The friends of ED address on page xvii is no longer valid.

From the Back Cover

What you'll learn

• Updates to the first edition with the latest PHP techniques for modern, dynamic web design
• Create dynamic websites with design and usability in mind, as well as functionality
• Understand how PHP scripts work, giving you confidence to adapt them to your own needs
• Bring online forms to life, check required fields, and ensure user input is safe to process
• Upload files and automatically create thumbnails from larger images
• Manage website content with a searchable database

Who this book is for

This is a "must have" reference book for any Web developer using PHP scripting language. If you have read the first edition classic, then this update will bring you the latest PHP techniques and best practices. If you are new to dynamic web design with PHP, then David will introduce you to the core techniques and methods for dynamic PHP web sites, ready for the 21st century!

Edition details

• Publisher: friendsofED
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1430232498
• ISBN 13: 9781430232490
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 528