I went from knowing some HTML before I bought this book, and after reading PHP Black Book I was able to dive into PHP right away.

I am now a developer of a Content Management System which implements PHP and a MySQL database, which I owe alot of credit to this book. Peter Moulding has done an outstanding job writing this book! Though I do admit some of the example code is incorrect, everything that is written and meant to teach you something succeeds with flying colors.

This is also an excellent PHP reference book. Anytime I am in doubt of something, or need to double check something, this book has the answer. It was well worth the money!

i read this book , i read this book again and i read this book thrice . except for a few things there is nothing that helped me . Most of the examples are poor to follow and many of them do not work .

the only thing that can be learnt from the book is that there's nobody else in the world who can program better than Peter Moulding . Peter Moulding is a guru , he has learnt 50 websites , 25 years of experience , lots of languages etc. etc. etc. and other people who make websites are foolish but call themselves 'experts' .

I am not writing this because of frustration but thats how the book really is

This is not a very well-organized book. The examples are generally over-simplified. My biggest complaint, however, is with the cd rom - it includes "Source Code" from the examples in the book. The source code is merely all of the snippets of code in each chapter jammed into a few html pages. For example chapter 17, "Objects" has several "Example" pages which do not work because objects are illegally redefined several times within the same page. The author does spell it all out in the chapter, but the examples are simply not usable.

This is not a very well-organized book. The examples are generally over-simplified. My biggest complaint, however, is with the cd rom - it includes "Source Code" from the examples in the book. The source code is merely all of the snippets of code in each chapter jammed into a few html pages. For example chapter 17, "Objects" has several "Example" pages which do not work because objects are illegally redefined several times within the same page. The author does spell it all out in the chapter, but the examples are simply not usable.

I've bought a couple of PHP and other programming books that were good and when I ordered the PHP Black Book, I never thought that this would become my desk reference and partner on work. Why? Because it has a simple, interesting, fun reading and because it is so well written and organized that you wont get lost on chapters and subjects.
For me, it is not one more book, this has become The Book and if you're considering PHP programming, you've got it all here with fun and professionalism.

I bought this book expecting it to be an exhaustive resource on how to start programing with PHP. I went into it with relatively little knowledge of server side programing, but the back of the book promised to fill me in on all the relevant details. It didn't.

The book is organized into chapters on general subjects with an "intermediate solutions" and a "in depth" section in each. While it might make some sense for a book, the organization makes reading the book chronologically not work at all. Even the reference is shody at best, very irratic. It includes reference to virtually useless date functions for coverting between dates in the jewish and the roman calenders in the second chapter! The section on the MySQL database includes how to insert rows into a database and create tables, but not how to update or delete entries! Such erratic relevance is present throughout the book - there are many several page long sections which give a one sentense long description to an entire class of rarely used functions. Not only are the functions not especially useful, but the brief and cursory explainations mean that one would have to use another reference material to get them working in the first place. Additionally, many excerpts of complex code are presented without sufficient explaination of the basic concepts behind them. It's not explained well enough to impart a mastery of the skills upon the reader. The book sets out to be both a teaching tool and a reference material, but fails miserably on both accounts. One would be far better off merely learning the stuff at the PHP.net, as I was told when I asked on usenet for recommendation of a book and I foolishly ignored. At least the reference there is complete. Some subjects that are important today (that may not have been at the time of writing), such as setting register_globals to off in the php.ini settings are not even mentioned in the book.

The other annoying aspect of the book is the author's sense of humor and his stories. As was mentioned in another review, it's fine if the material is good, but really is just fluff that covers up holes. His disdain for JavaScript is understandable, but uncalled for. When an author poorly describes even just the basics of a programing language, his extra comments aren't appreciated nor helpful. We'll be writing code that works worse than the poorly writen code of so called "professional" websites that he mentions his hate for many times, with only his book as a resource.

Yes, the book does have a few useful excerpts and sections, but until the reader has a well educated knowledge of the subject, far beyond what the book imparts, it doesn't help at all. There's no compensation for the gaping holes in the text.

This book belongs in the bargain shelf, which is where I found it recently at the local Borders. I paid ... for it brand new, drastically reduced from ....

The largest problems I had were: missing example code, incorrect code, missing critical information, and too much author ballyhooing. Also, the included CD did not work, it was corrupt.

In numerous instances, the author builds from one concept to the next, adding in more complex capabiilites. Unfortunately, the author often fails to provide the complete resultant code, leaving the reader to attempt at guessing at the correct code. Case in point...page 347...no print function is given. Thus the preceding code examples are useless if you do not have the experience to figure it out, which I didn't.

Incorrect code...some of the stuff that is in here is just plain wrong. Copied verbatim from the pages, the code just flat out does not work.

Missing Information: The chapters explain about 75% of what you need to know to be successful. Missing info, for example, in the email and form sections makes the chapters incomprehensible. There is nothing to bring them together to use forms and emailing together. I had to go online to get these concepts and required code and config changes to make it work.

Lastly, the author spends a lot of time making jokes, which is fine, if your work is absolutely complete and accurate. The humor becomes more droll as the mistakes and errors pile up.

Lastly, Coriolis is apparently no longer in business. When I found out the CD was corrupt, I immediately emailed the "email address" in the book for assistance, possibly to get a new CD. In short order I got an email error message back stating the email address ... did not exist. I then browsed to ... Nothing. After a Google search on "Coriolis Group", I finally found the news that this company no longer exists, and is now under the control of some cheezy-named publishing company, supposedly the original two guys are now back in charge. I don't know the gory details about the company politics, but their "new" website is beyond boring, and offered no help for us trying to make heads nor tails over this book.

To make a long story short, don't buy this book. There are too many other great resources out there.

It took a lot of my time to read and understand, most of the examples in the book are pretty much useless, you won't often need to know at all. Even though "PHP essentials" is slightly outdated, it presented with useful examples, I can finish that book in a day or two, very easy reading. Moreover, it doesn't cost any money at all if read it online, I bought it on sale for 4 bucks. The best way to learn is by studying and actually doing examples. the black book is served more like a reference book to me.

Had I not learned the basics of PHP elsewhere, I would not have learned them from this book. It is poorly layed out. Instead of systematic description of the language and its design issues, you get someone skittering around, mixing important details with unimportant fluff.

I recommend Welling and Thomson's PHP and MySQL over this title just in the PHP department.

To add insult to injury, the author is quite egotistical and thinks you will be amused by his practice of using himself in his sample code. Puleaze!

I got this book as a christmas present from my mother (how's that for geekiness -- it's all I wanted for christmas!).

I've used it extensively to help me write a content mgmt system, helpdesk, and filemaker/php xml integration. It's been a real gem. Now, it's not for those who need to learn, and some of the bad reviews for the book reflect this. And I think he moves along a little fast sometimes, as many authors tend to.

But this book is basically organized into 1) intelligent discussion 2) class diagrams and useful information on what's built into php and 3) excellent howto examples with code.

It's a great hands-on guide for building, and I reccomend it for those looking for a great desktop reference.

To the author: good job

Status: We definitely reccomend this book to intermediate php coding clients in our hosting company.

I was disappointed with purchasing this book.It has a very diverse coverage on PHP and is the not the best books to begin
PHP scripting with. i found it difficult to wade through the examples presented in the book
and also ended up finding several bugs in the code presented in the book.
I was disappointed that this book didn't deliver my money's worth