This book is full of errors and unexplained concepts. It is the worst book I have ever read. I can't believe the author or editor ever checked to see if there were any errors, and that everything made sense. This is horrible for O'Reilly's reputation. I probably will not buy another O'Reilly book.

This book is terribly written. There are typos everywhere, both simple grammar typos and coding/logic typos. For a beginner to the material it is extremely nerve wracking to follow. Not only do the typos throw you for a loop, but it has no logical flow to the material. For example, they go over creating tables in Chapter 7, but you they don't tell you how to use mysql until chapter 8. Then in the middle of chapter 8 (p 137) they tell you to create an NEW database, followed immediately by a section on how to manipulate a table (in this example, `books`) in that new database (p 138). Problem is, ERROR: there are no tables! You just created a new database and it is empty! The table they are referring to was used as an example to explain database concepts in Ch 7 (p 124).

I love(d) my O'Reilly books but I will NEVER buy another one blindly again. Even worse, I read review for the second edition and apparently not much if any of these major problems have been fixed.

I find it extremely hard to believe that anyone who gave this book a decent rating actually used this book to learn PHP & mySQL or even read it through.

I came to this book as a newbie, with some knowledge of HTML and CSS, and that's about it. This book nearly killed my desire to learn PHP/MySQL.

The problems start early, in Chapter 2. The installation information is seriously flawed. Many of the links they point you to are dead. And even when I went to the book's web site for an updated link, and followed the instructions to the letter, I still wasn't in business. I googled to try to get help and stumbled across some other lost soul using this book, with exactly the same problem as me. Guess what? He was begging for help on a message board somewhere. I should have realized right then that this book was worthless. But I soldiered on.

I managed to get PHP and MySQL downloaded (though the connector was still not working), and started working on some of the PHP coding. I learned some PHP, sure, but it was a slow, slow process. Practical applications? Practice exercises? Clear explanations for inexperienced computer programmers - presumably the kind of people who would be buying a book like this? Rare or nonexistent.

I skipped ahead to the MySQL section, made it in a few pages, and then they recommended that I install PhpMyAdmin. Well, I did, and then I ran into the problem with the lack of connection between PHP and MySQL again. So I went back to Chapter 2, and wasted another hour of my life trying to figure out how to get the past the basic installation issues.

So, yeah, I paid $30 so I could figure it all out for myself. And I still haven't. So thanks a lot, folks. You took $30 of my hard-earned money, and in return gave me several hours of aggravation.

I know the computer experts out there will laugh at this review - they always think they're superior to newbs. But I know I'm not stupid. A better book will teach me the basics of PHP and MySQL, I just need to find it. This one is not newb-friendly. And if a how-to book isn't newb-friendly, then as far as I'm concerned it ain't worth a thing.

NEWBS BEWARE. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

I enjoyed this book. I felt like it did a good job introducing both PHP and MySQL without being overwhelming. However, I wasn't so impressed with how it covered Object Oriented PHP, or how it introduced PEAR and Smarty.

For the most part, the OOP section seemed to be put in there as an after-thought. Also, the book switched gears pretty quickly between using the standard PHP libraries for getting things done, to using PEAR. And, there really wasn't much of an explanation accompanying the inner-workings of Smarty - more of a "here's the code, it does this" kind of an approach. What makes this so frustrating is that you learn a bunch of stuff earlier in the book that you don't see being used in the later examples (or the big final example in Chapter 17, which I'll address next).

The biggest let down I found was that if you followed the final example (Chapter 17 - building your own web app), it doesn't even work. At first, I wrote it out myself from the code in the book, so I could follow along closely and try understand what was going on. It didn't work, so I assumed my code was filled with typos. I registered on-line with O'Reilly and was able to access the book on their website. From there, I copied and pasted the scripts for the web app directly into the various .php and .tpl files on my machine, and made sure to name them exactly as they are named in the book. It still didn't work!

There are inconsistencies in how scripts are named and referenced in other scripts. And the best part is that it doesn't even include the script for logging out and ending your session, even though there is a link to it (logout.php) in the footer.tpl Smarty template file. I know it isn't that difficult to make your logout script based on some of the scripts from the earlier chapters, but it's still the fact that they leave out a whole part in the final example. Ultimately, I can't help but wonder how difficult it would have been for the authors to verify that the website did what it was meant to do, before putting it in their book.

I know it sounds like I am giving this book a harsh review... However, I did truly enjoy it and that is why it is still getting 4/5 stars. The negative points I brought up were not enough to bring down the overall effectiveness of this book as a learner's guide to PHP and MySQL, but definitely merits mentioning as a warning to potential readers/buyers.

PHP and MySQL are highly adaptive programs that can be used to create a variety of dynamic website potentials. Although fairly simple to use once you understand the basics, the learning curve on these programs is a little high at first. In order to use the capabilities, the user has to not only understand what the programs do and how they work together. However, probably the hardest part of the process is learning all the vocabulary associated with these systems.

Learning PHP & MySQL is a very good reference, especially for this latter challenge. The guide not only defines and explains each of the different concepts but gives examples that better illustrate these aspects while giving the user a glimpse into how they could use them for their own purposes. Especially for the more difficult sections, I really liked that I could replicate the code on my computer and see the results for myself. This aspect gave me a far better idea of how I could use these programs in conjunction to create the effects I want.

The php part is ok. The mysql, cookie, security chapters are junk. I guess
even the writer does not know what he is talking about. I do not know where
he pulled those chapters from. As a consequence, I had to go to mysql online
tutorial to learn mysql.

My background is computer science so I donot think other readers can understand what the author is talking about.

I am a long time programmer (15 years) and wanted to start a new project based on PHP scripts and a MySQL database. This book was quite helpfull in getting me started. It wasn't necessary to read the entire book. I read those sections that were signifigant to what I needed. My background is very heavy on Enterprise products like SAS, Oracle, and DB2. The project I was working on didn't require such huge resources so I picked up this book and setup a linux box with a LAMP configuration to get started.

The book is a good starting point. Paticularly important is the interaction between HTML and MySQL in PHP. You can get a lot of information on just PHP from the PHP documenation. The best value I got out of the book was learning about the interaction between PHP and MySQL.

Book was received in a timely manor and condition as promised.

I knew I had picked up the wrong book when, in the first or second chapter, the authors said that variable types didn't matter and that they wouldn't bother covering them until late in the book. Admittedly, I can see their point, but the way the statement was written made it apparent that they were aiming this at HTML authors and other people with little to no real programming experience. If you want to pick up the PHP language and already have experience with a real programming language or two, you'd be better off picking up something else. If not, this book actually would be a good way to get started. Recommended for people with little to no programming experience.

I have enjoyed this book and it is very well written with enough to get you going. However there are a lot of typos in the book. Most of them are easily ignorable such as a space omitted in an unimportant area or a simple hit of the wrong key. Generally you can ignore it and there is no problem with understanding the material.

Although Table 8-5 is pretty much useless (I haven't checked others). Just by making a simple string I found 4 mistakes and had to resort to web resources to get the right date strings.

Overall I wouldn't base my decision on that alone as it is a good book. I'm not unfamiliar with programing so learning the php was just learning the syntax. I however had never touched mySQL in my life before this and the book made it quite painfully clear.

I've been a long time customer of O'Reilly books. My experience has been that their authors are usually both competent programmers and writers. That said, this books has some serious problems. I would not recommend it to anyone, especially a beginner. It is full of code that has been deprecated since at least 2004(meaning code that may not be in future versions of php), typos, and the HTML appears to be HTML 4.01 when it approaches being valid at all. The last thing someone new to programming needs is to learn outdated practices.

I've been a long time customer of O'Reilly books. My experience has been that their authors are usually both competent programmers and writers. That said, this books has some serious problems. I would not recommend it to anyone, especially a beginner. It is full of code that has been deprecated since at least 2004(meaning code that may not be in future versions of php), typos, and the HTML appears to be HTML 4.01 when it approaches being valid at all. The last thing someone new to programming needs is a lousy textbook.

If you want to do "something" using PHP and MySQL, and you don't know anything about these tools, this book will help you a lot!
You will find everything you need to a quick start.

I recommend it !

I like this book because it was an easy step by step introduction to PHP and MySQL. New features are introduced one at a time so I didn't feel overloaded. This book also has many demonstrations using real life examples of situations where PHP and MySQL would be used. This book also shows how to properly setup Apache, PHP and MySQL. What I really admired was the easy to read language of this book that makes it useful both as a reference and as a book to read straight through.

I thought the book was biased towards Windows, as the setup section goes in depth on the Windows environment. I would have preferred a more even handed approach that also covers the Unix-like environment.

The book also uses some special PHP modules, PHP Smarty and PHP Pear. Personally, I was turned off by the book's use of these. I would have preferred that the book use entirely standard PHP. Considering that this is an introductory book, I think using object oriented modules is too much.

I like this book because it was an easy step by step introduction to PHP and MySQL. New features are introduced one at a time so I didn't feel overloaded. This book also has many demonstrations using real life examples of situations where PHP and MySQL would be used. This book also shows how to properly setup Apache, PHP and MySQL. What I really admired was the easy to read language of this book that makes it useful both as a reference and as a book to read straight through.

I thought the book was biased towards Windows, as the setup section goes in depth on the Windows environment. I would have preferred a more even handed approach that also covers the Unix-like environment.

The book also uses some special PHP modules, PHP Smarty and PHP Pear. Personally, I was turned off by the book's use of these. I would have preferred that the book use entirely standard PHP. Considering that this is an introductory book, I think using object oriented modules is too much.

It's a good basic overview, but the errors in the code snips are just too frustrating. I bought it because it was recently published (2006). But trying to get PEAR to work (DB.php has been superseded by MDB2.php) and even the simple form were exercises in futility.

If you do use it get an AMP package (google: Uniform Server) and skip the install section. You'd think O'Reilly could include and AMP stack on a CD in the book and use that 20 pages for another exercise

There are two problems with this book. First of all it's filled with typos, both in the text and in the sample codes. The typos in the text made me laugh (its vs. it's type stuff), those in the codes made me cry. There are entire lines in some codes or screen ouputs that clearly do not belong there (take a look at page 126, about a third of the way into the page there's a line that goes --> ,"Aaron Weber"); <-- . Clearly, this line serves no purpose on its own and it was accidentally cut and paste from the end of the following line. Just too many typos, within 10 pages I had lost my confidence in this book. Secondly (and more importantly), this is NOT a beginner's book. It attempts to educate the reader on PHP and MySQL, and fails at both. For instance, the book never once mentions something as basic as the difference between echo and print in PHP. Then there's the instructions on installing phpMyAdmin on page 140, specifically item 6. I know nothing about MySQL so I have no idea how to "set the hostname, etc. of my database in the config.inc.php file". Thanks for nothing. In summary, if you're a beginner, you may think you've learned PHP and MySQL upon reading this book, and in fact you'll just be confused, and if you already know them, then why on earth would you use this simplistic book? I've returned my copy for a refund. By the way, I saw that one of the positive reviews below was posted on the book's blog site. Let's see if mine makes it.

I returned the book for a refund. The book contains too many errors! The installation instructions in Chapter 2, contain so many errors that I lost all confidence in the remaining sections. If you purchase this book, good luck getting past the installation...

I'd give it 0 stars if I could!

Do you want to know how to create dynamic web sites? If you do, then this book is for you. Authors Michele E. Davis and Jon A. Phillips, have done an outstanding job of writing a book that shows you how programming, templating and databases work.

Davis and Phillips, begin by showing you how PHP handles simple text, and then moves on to basic decision making. Then, the authors discuss expressions and statements. Next, they introduce you to some basic database structure so that you have an understanding of databases. They also show you how to connect to the MySQL database using the client tools that come with MySQL. The authors then continue by showing you how to connect to a MySQL server from PHP. Then, they show you how to start working on some of the more common tasks that you'll perform when writing PHP programs. Next, the authors show you how to perform more complicated database tasks from PHP. They also explore your options for validating form data before a form submission. Finally, the authors arm you with numerous resources that can help you during your PHP and MySQL journey.

This most excellent book will walk you through many challenges. Perhaps more importantly, you'll be able to design new features and let you imagination run wild!

This book delivers on it's title "Learning PHP & MySQL". I find it helpful to have a range of books on PHP. This is a book I'll go to when I need to go back to basics. I recommend it for anyone looking to take the step from static HTML to a database driven website.

If you have some experience in web development but are new to these technologies, this is a fine, clear, efficient primer to absorb and springboard from.

I found this book to be seriously flawed in the following ways:
1.) The installation instructions contain many errors from bad URLs, to steps out of order, to downright errors and confusion surrounding which version of PHP is actually being installed and how. You would be much better off Googling for a tutorial on the subject.
2.) Certain topics are mentioned, but then totally glossed over. I am left wondering if a lot of information wasn't cut from the book without removing the "teasers" that promise coverage of a topic.
Simply put, I just do not believe a technical editor ever read through this book, and it is definitely not up to O'Reilly's typically high standards.
I hope this helps.

I am a newbie to MySQL/PHP. Truly. Many reviews of the O'Reilly series clearly have extensive backgrounds in programming. I do not: I had a little HTML under my belt, that's it.

The book does do an excellent job explaining what Apache, MySQL, and PHP are and how they interact. The author does a good job explaining PHP syntax and MYSQL as well. But, if you pick this book up as a beginner with a specific project in mind, you may have trouble figuring out how what your are learning relates to what you want to do. That's the joy of being a newbie. Using this book along with something like the Nutshell books, which are reference books, will speed things along.

The installation section in this book--for the true beginner--was a huge let down. This section assumes knowledge that many people who are diving headlong into this may not know. If your Apache installation goes wrong (and mine did), the author simply tells you to redo the section. I quintuple checked my configuration instructions: everything was as instructed. And you get PHP and MySQL to work if Apache isn't working.

Ultimately, I tried both of the all-in-one installations of AMP: XAMPP and wampserver, which preserved my ability to proceed forward.

Learning PHP & MySQL is a detailed guide to building a database-driven web site. The authors do an excellent job of starting from the beginning, assuming no prior knowledge of either PHP or MySQL. In fact the only assumptions that the authors seem to make is that you have a very basic understanding of HTML. After working through the book and the detailed examples anyone should be able to write basic programs the meet common needs as well as create and interface with a MySQL database. Some of the programming areas covered in the book include decision making, working with arrays, using functions, database design fundamentals (missing in most books), getting PHP to talk to MySQL, modifying objects and data, and security. At the end of the book the reader ends up with a complete example application.

The authors section on creating a MySQL database and working with it is excellent and truly reads easy to those not familiar with MySQL at all. This is the best introductory text for implementing PHP and MySQL that I have read. If you are already familiar with both PHP and MySQL then you will probably prefer another text but if you are new to them this is a text you should seriously consider as one of the best teaching tools and first forays into the field. Learning PHP & MySQL is very highly recommended to anyone wanting to learn the basics of using this very powerful combination to create a database-driven dynamic website.

This book forms a decent introduction to the topic, but it's annoying when you have to figure out what the authors MEANT to say when code examples don't work as advertised. The worst case I've seen is on page 183, where the code is so far off from what they meant it to be, if you run it, it produces a blank page. There's no output. I managed to figure out what they MEANT to say, and to make it work, but I shouldn't have to do that. There are plenty of other spots where I've been scratching my head trying to figure out what they meant, where things were not sufficiently explained, or where things didn't work as described. It's frustrating and time-consuming for a beginner to the topic like me.

'Learning PHP and MySQL' by Michele Davis is another Barry Bonds-esque home run of a book in the "Learning" series of O'Reilly gems. Covering a nice amount of 350 pages, the book is broken up into 17 Chapters:

01. Dynamic Content on the Web
02. Installation of PHP
03. Basics of PHP
04. Intermediate PHP
05. PHP Functions
06. Arrays
07. Database Basics
08. Using MySQL
09. PHP > MySQL communication
10. Forms
11. Practical PHP
12. Modifying MySQL Objects and PHP Data
13. Cookies, Sessions, Access Control
14. Security
15. Validation & Error Handling
16. Sample Apps
17. Wrapping Up

I like any book that has the word 'Learning' on the cover to not be too long, the writing to be clear and easy to understand, with plenty of pictures and screenshots so I can easily understand the concepts presented within. This book does all that and a whole lot more.

PHP has been around for some time in its role as the "other child" next to ASP and JSP. With this book by your side, you will soon learn that this technology has just as much to offer as the other 2 prevailing ones, except this one is open source and FREE (F-R-E BABY)!!

Support your open source developers out there and learn that you don't have to turn to Microsoft or Sun in order to produce a web site that is feature full and packed at the same time!!

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

This book will take you from a basic understanding of creating static HTML to an elementary but quite nifty practical knowledge of serving up dynamic Web pages on your own.

Chapters 1-6 take you through basic orientation, the installation of Apache, PHP and MySQL, followed by an intro to PHP statements.

Chapters 7-9 introduce database concepts and step you through getting PHP to talk to MySQL.

Chapters 10-17 begin the process of creating forms and other components of Web sites and applications following all the way through to integrating some sample applications.

Each step and procedure has ample code printouts, logic diagrams and output screenshots. Review of knowledge was done well. One feature of this book you should take advantage of is the question section at the end of each chapter. I usually find these irritating and skip them because often the questions don't reinforce learning and no answers are provided. The questions in this book *are* well constructed and the answers *are* provided.

Quibbles: Be prepared for a bit of keyboarding. O'Reilly provides a site for the book but the example code is not available for download. Your first bout of keying code may end in failure because the authors forget that in the first examples (the most important ones for an absolute beginner!) they need to recall being a beginner. They ask you to write out and save "a simple HTML document." I did that. The example did not work on the server. I checked this, I checked that, I re-typed the code, I typed other examples. No luck. Then I stumbled onto changing the extension of my .html file to .php and all was well. See my point?