If you're using PHP 4, then chances are good that an upgrade to PHP 5 is in your future. The more you've heard about the exciting new features in PHP 5, the sooner that upgrade is probably going to be. Although an in-depth, soup-to-nuts reference guide to the language is good to have on hand, it's not the book an experienced PHP programmer needs to get started with the latest release. What you need is a lean and focused guide that answers your most pressing questions: what's new with the technology, what's different, and how do I make the best use of it? In other words, you need a copy of Upgrading to PHP 5.This book is targeted toward PHP developers who are already familiar with PHP 4. Rather than serve as a definitive guide to the entire language, the book zeroes in on PHP 5's new features, and covers these features definitively. You'll find a concise appraisal of the differences between PHP 4 and PHP 5, a detailed look at what's new in this latest version, and you'll see how PHP 5 improves on PHP 4 code. See PHP 4 and PHP 5 code side-by-side, to learn how the new features make it easier to solve common PHP problems. Each new feature is shown in code, helping you understand why it's there, when to use it, and how it's better than PHP 4. Short, sample programs are included throughout the book.Topics covered in Upgrading to PHP 5 include: The new set of robust object-oriented programming features An improved MySQL extension, supporting MySQL 4.1, prepared statements, and bound parameters Completely rewritten support for XML: DOM, XSLT, SAX, and SimpleXML Easy web services with SOAP SQLite, an embedded database library bundled with PHP 5 Cleaner error handling with exceptions Other new language features, such as iterators, streams, and more. Upgrading to PHP 5 won't make you wade through information you've covered before. Written by Adam Trachtenberg, coauthor of the popular PHP Cookbook, this book will take you straight into the heart of all that's new in PHP 5. By the time you've finished, you'll know PHP 5 in practice as well as in theory.

PHP 5's co-creator and two leading PHP developers share their unique insights and realistic examples to illuminate PHP 5's new object model, powerful design patterns, improved XML Web services support, and much more.

PHP has gained a following among non-technical web designers who need to add interactive aspects to their sites. Offering a gentle learning curve, PHP is an accessible yet powerful language for creating dynamic web pages. As its popularity has grown, PHP's basic feature set has become increasingly more sophisticated. Now PHP 5 boasts advanced features--such as new object-oriented capabilities and support for XML and Web Services--that will please even the most experienced web professionals while still remaining user-friendly enough for those with a lower tolerance for technical jargon.If you've wanted to try your hand at PHP but haven't known where to start, then Learning PHP 5 is the book you need. If you've wanted to try your hand at PHP but haven't known where to start, then Learning PHP 5 is the book you need. With attention to both PHP 4 and the new PHP version 5, it provides everything from a explanation of how PHP works with your web server and web browser to the ins and outs of working with databases and HTML forms. Written by the co-author of the popular PHP Cookbook, this book is for intelligent (but not necessarily highly-technical) readers. Learning PHP 5 guides you through every aspect of the language you'll need to master for professional web programming results. This book provides a hands-on learning experience complete with exercises to make sure the lessons stick.Learning PHP 5 covers the following topics, and more: How PHP works with your web browser and web server PHP language basics, including data, variables, logic and looping Working with arrays and functions Making web forms Working with databases like MySQL Remembering users with sessions Parsing and generating XML Debugging Written by David Sklar, coauthor of the PHP Cookbook and an instructor in PHP, this book offers the ideal classroom learning experience whether you're in a classroom or on your own. From learning how to install PHP to designing database-backed web applications, Learning PHP 5 will guide you through every aspect of the language you'll need to master to achieve professional web programming results.

This book will show you how to modernize your page-based, include-oriented PHP application by extracting and replacing its legacy artifacts. We will use a step-by-step approach, moving slowly and methodically, to improve your application from the ground up. Each completed step in the process will keep your codebase fully operational with higher quality. Please note that this book is about modernizing in terms of practice and technique, and not in terms of tools. We are not going to discuss the latest, hottest frameworks or libraries. Most of the very limited code we do add to your application is specific to this book. When we are done, you will be able to breeze through your code like the wind. Your code will be fully modernized: autoloaded, dependency-injected, unit-tested, layer-separated, and front-controlled.

What is this book about? Beginning PHP5 is a complete tutorial in PHP5'slanguage features and functionality, beginning with the basics andbuilding up to the design and construction of complex data-drivenWeb sites. Fully functioning applications are developed through thecourse of the book. Other features of the book include installationguide and troubleshooting tips, introduction to relationaldatabases, practical working examples and applications, and adetailed language reference. Here are the new topics in this edition: OOP PEAR GTK MSI CLI SQLite Error handling with try/catch

This comprehensive tutorial and reference covers all the basics of PHP 5, a popular open source Web scripting language, and MySQL 4.012, the most popular open source database engine Explores why users need PHP and MySQL, how to get started, how to add PHP to HTML, and how to connect HTML Web pages to MySQL Offers an extensive tutorial for developing applications with PHP and MySQL Includes coverage of how to install, administer, and design MySQL databases independently of PHP; exception and error handling; debugging techniques; PostgreSQL database system; and PEAR database functions The authors provide unique case studies of how and where to use PHP drawn from their own extensive Web experience

A collection of problems, solutions, and practical examples for PHP programmers. The book contains a unique and extensive collection of best practices for everyday PHP programming dilemmas. For every problem addressed in the book, there's a worked-out solution or "recipe" -- a short, focused piece of code you can insert directly into your application. However, this book offers more than cut-and-paste code. You also get explanations of how and why the code works, so you can learn to adapt the problem-solving techniques to similar situations. The recipes in the PHP Cookbook range from simple tasks, such as sending a database query and fetching URLs, to entire programs that demonstrate complex tasks, such as printing HTML tables and generating bar charts. This book contains an impressive collection of useful code for PHP programmers, from novices to advanced practitioners. Instead of poking around mailing lists, online documentation, and other sources, you can rely on the PHP Cookbook to provide quick solutions to common problems, so you can spend your time on those out-of-the-ordinary problems specific to your application.