Programming Php, 2nd Edition

Programming PHP, Second Edition, is an authoritative guide to PHP 5 and is filled with the unique knowledge of the creator of PHP (Rasmus Lerdorf) and other PHP experts.

PHP is a simple yet powerful open source scripting language for creating dynamic web content. The millions of web sites powered by PHP are a testament to its popularity and ease of use. PHP is used by programmers, who appreciate its flexibility and speed, and web designers, who value its accessi bility and convenience.

This book explains PHP language syntax and programming techniques in a clear and concise manner and includes examples that illustrate both correct usage and common idioms. It also includes style tips and practical programming advice that will help you become not just a PHP programmer, but a good PHP programmer. Programming PHP, Second Edition, covers everything you need to know to create effective web applications with PHP.

Contents include:

• The basics of the PHP language, including data types, variables, operators, and flow control statements
  
  
• The basics of functions, strings, arrays, and objects
  
  
• PHP web application techniques, such as form processing and validation, session tracking, and cookies
  
  
• Interacting with relational databases, such as MySQL and Oracle, using the database-independent PEAR DB library and the new PDO library
  
  
• Generating dynamic images, creating PDF files, and parsing XML files with PHP
  
  
• Advanced topics, such as creating secure scripts, error handling, performance tuning, and writing your own C language extensions to PHP
  
  
• A handy quick reference to all the core functions in PHP and all the standard extensions that ship with PHP.

About the Authors
Kevin Tatroe has been a Macintosh and Unix programmer for ten years. Being lazy, he's attracted to languages and frameworks that do much of the work for you, such as the AppleScript, Perl, and PHP languages and the WebObjects and Cocoa programming environments. Kevin, his wife Jenn, his son Hadden, and two cats live on the edge of the rural plains of Colorado, just far away enough from the mountains to avoid the worst snowfall, and just close enough to avoid tornadoes. The house is filled with LEGO creations, action figures, and other toys.

Rasmus Lerdorf started the PHP Project back in 1995 and has been actively involved in PHP development ever since. Also involved in a number of other Open Source projects, Rasmus is a longtime Apache contributor and foundation member. He is the author of the first edition of the PHP Pocket Reference, and the co-author of Programming PHP.

Peter MacIntyre lives and works in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada. He has over 16 years of experience in the information technology industry, primarily in the area of software development.

Peter's technical skill set includes several client/server tools and relational database systems such as PHP, PowerBuilder, Visual Basic, Active Server Pages, and CA-Visual Objects.

Peter is certified by ZEND Corporation on PHP 4.x and has contributed writing material for Using Visual Objects (Que Corp.), Using PowerBuilder 5 (Que Corp.), ASP.NET Bible (Wiley Pub.), and Web Warrior Survey on Web Development Languages (Course Technology).

Peter is also currently a contributing editor and author to the on-line and in-print magazine called php|architect (www.phparch.com). He has also spoken several times at North American and International computer conferences including CA-World in New Orleans, USA; CA-TechniCon in Cologne, Germany; and CA-Expo in Melbourne, Australia.