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I'm motivating myself to learn PHP, as I have the next 6 months to practically do nothing before college (majoring in Web Design). I was wondering if anyone could recommend any great starter books for PHP, and any other books that I could use to help me learn the most about PHP that I possibly could. I'm prepared for constant cramming, just need a few books that know what they are actually doing, and explain everything for newbies who have zero experience with PHP. Any help? I'm using Windows XP, not sure if that makes a difference. Thanks.
John
P.S.: if you haven't installed PHP yet or MySQL for that matter, check out Sokkit at sokkit.net: they got a good PHP4.3/MySQL/Apache2 package that makes it a breeze to get up and running... you get a free 30 day trial and if you want to purchase it, it goes for only like $25!
[edited by: jatar_k at 5:49 pm (utc) on Feb. 22, 2004]
[edit reason] delinked [/edit]
The Welling book is good too, I have it and refer to it occasionally. But it's a bit more wordy (encyclopedic) and the Visual guide is more suited toward quickly getting all the basics down by just looking at the code and the explanation.
Also I highly recommend going to the main php website and downloading the php "help" .chm file that has been designed for windows. It's all the php documentation, tutorial, functions, notes-- all built into a Windows help file. I have a shortcut to this on my Start menu on my XP box and it's convenient when I need to lookup the syntax of something. Actually nowadays I mainly use that and the PHP Cookbook.
About Sokkit though... I thought PHP was free to use? How come it costs $25?
these aren't
easyphp.org
firepages.com.au - phpdev
* Roll your own install of Apache/PHP/MySQL. If you can, set it up under Linux, even if you don't end up using it regularly, knowing a little will help a lot (you can do a dual-boot machine pretty easily if you are cash short).
* The book that taught me the most about programming in PHP is the book that taught me a fair bit about programming and nothing about PHP. It was written before PHP was invented, but it will really help you conceptualize. It is The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (aka SICP) by Abelson and Sussman and teaches using the language Scheme (dialect of Lisp), but it's not really about programming in Scheme. They chose Scheme because the syntax is so simple that they don't have to teach it, and therefore can teach higher level concepts. Most books about PHP are about teaching you the language. The books that are about teaching you to program (and how to think)are all going to be written using Scheme, C, Java or something like that. The books mentioned will help teach you PHP syntax and only as a by-product teach you how to think about a problem. SICP will help teach you how to think about a problem and only as a by-product teach you anything about Scheme syntax. I am not lying when I tell you that SICP changed not simply how I think about structuring a program, but how I think about tasks as simple as folding laundry and shovelling a driveway. Also, it is the standard text for first-year CS majors are MIT and Berkeley.
Full text free at: [mitpress.mit.edu...]
Best Windows-based environment for Scheme
[drscheme.org...]
Some other books I've had recommended are some titles on patterns, espcially Design Patterns by the so-called Gang of Four, but I can't speak about those personally. Here's an article on how design patterns can be applied to PHP
[zend.com...]
Tom
