Best books for learning PHP

[zulufox]

Taking a suggestion from a previous thread, instead of working my site around what the cms can do, I'm gonna empower myself by learning php.

Does anyone out there know of a really really great book about learning php, assuming I learnt everythig in the book, what could I construct.

Thank you so much1

[isitreal]

It depends on your taste in tech books, personally I always regret the money I spend if I buy something other than an O'Reilly book, in this case 'Programming PHP', by Rasmus Lerdorf (the guy who makes PHP) and Kevin Tatroe.

If you like more examples and looser style, but still decent, get the 'Beginner PHP' from Wrox press, they have more examples and basic stuff, like how to set up apache/php on your home computer, which is pretty useful.

[cookie2]

Two books that helped me a lot since I knew zero about PHP when I got them:

PHP for the World Wide Web by Larry Ullman (Peachpit Press) - Very basic book for first-timers. Easy to understand and has working examples you can easily do and follow.

PHP and MySQL Web Development by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson (Sams) - More advanced although it does start from the premise you don't know any PHP and goes right through databases, building a shopping cart, CMS, password protection, etc.

I still reference both of these books often.