very promising PHP book free in PDF format

PHP5 Power Programming by A. Gutmans, S. Bakken, D. Rethans - intro Zeev

[mincklerstraat]

PHP5 Power Programming by A. Gutmans, S. Bakken, D. Rethans - intro Zeev Suraski - Prentice Hall - 720pp in PDF form, first printing Oct 2004

I guess this has been out for a while, but I only just saw it, and I don't see a mention in library / search drew up blank on the authors so I figured this was worth a heads-up, given so many questions here regarding a good PHP book.

I'm all in favor of having a "dead tree" variety PHP book too, but for those who can't afford or can't choose, this looks very promising indeed.

Andi Gutmans was one of the co-founders of Zend and authors of the Zend engine, he's now VP of tech at Zend (Zend is a "portmanteau" of the names Zeev and Andi - like Deb and Ian).

Stig Bakken founded the PEAR project and for a long time was one of the main guys behind the PHP manual, final editor, I believe.

Derick Rethans does a lot of the programming that goes into the PHP core at present, and is also the author of xdebug, a lovely debugger / profiler app.

I wrote "intro Zeev" in the description since Zeev fit and Suraski didn't, and probably a lot of people recognize the "Zeev" part before the "Suraski". Zeev, like Andi Gutmans, co-founder of Zend, Zend engine, etc.

The book is published in the Bruce Perens series by Prentice Hall. Bruce Perens, the editor, has been a prominent person in the Linux and Open Source world in general. You've probably seen the work of some of his programs in Pixar films, where he worked for quite a while.

The link to the PDF:
[phptr.com...]
The link to the page of the Perens series:
[phptr.com...]
(some books available in complete form, others only sample chapters).

I've only just found it so I can't really give you a review, maybe somebody else wants to review it.

[RonPK]

Thx for the link, mincklerstraat. The book looks promising indeed. Advanced level, much information about OO programming, focused on PHP5. It's a 9 MB download. Here's the TOC:

Chapter 1: What Is New in PHP 5?
Chapter 2: PHP 5 Basic Language
Chapter 3: PHP 5 OO Language
Chapter 4: PHP 5 Advanced OOP and Design Patterns
Chapter 5: How to Write a Web Application with PHP
Chapter 6: Databases with PHP 5
Chapter 7: Error Handling
Chapter 8: XML with PHP 5
Chapter 9: Mainstream Extensions
Chapter 10: Using PEAR
Chapter 11: Important PEAR Packages
Chapter 12: Building PEAR Components
Chapter 13: Making the Move
Chapter 14: Performance
Chapter 15: An Introduction to Writing PHP Extensions
Chapter 16: PHP Shell Scripting
A. PEAR and PECL Package Index
B. phpDocumentor Format Reference
C. Zend Studio Quick Start

[JamShady]

Cheers for the link :) Just in time for me to cane the free printing facilities at uni before I finish this friday :)