It hasn’t taken Web developers long to discover that when it comes to creating dynamic, database-driven Web sites, MySQL and PHP provide a winning open source combination. Add this book to the mix, and there’s no limit to the powerful, interactive Web sites that developers can create. With step-by-step instructions, complete scripts, and expert tips to guide readers, veteran author and database designer Larry Ullman gets right down to business: After grounding readers with separate discussions of first the scripting language (PHP) and then the database program (MySQL), he goes on to cover security, sessions and cookies, and using additional Web tools, with several sections devoted to creating sample applications. This guide is indispensable for intermediate- to advanced level Web designers who want to replace their static sites with something dynamic. In this edition, the bulk of the new material covers the latest versions of both technologies: PHP 6 (due out in 2008) and MySQL 5 (available now). The book’s publication date is likely to beat the official release of PHP 6, making it one of the first books available on the subject.

David Powers has been professionally involved with the electronic media for some 30 years, mostly in radio and television—he was BBC Tokyo correspondent in the late 1980s and early 1990s—but more recently with the Internet. He built his first site in 1995, and was instantly hooked. Eventually, the sheer tedium of updating content convinced him there must be a better way. After a brief flirtation with ASP, he experimented with PHP, and found himself hooked yet again.

A fluent Japanese speaker, Powers specializes in building Japanese-English bilingual websites, writing about Japan, and translating Japanese (he’s translated several plays). He co-authored Foundation Dreamweaver MX 2004 (1590593081) and PHP Web Development with Dreamweaver MX 2004 (1590593502). Powers also worked as technical reviewer on a number of web-related titles for Apress.

Over the past three years PHP has evolved from being a niche language used to add dynamic functionality to small sites to a powerful tool making strong inroads into large-scale, business-critical Web systems.

The rapid maturation of PHP has created a skeptical population of users from more traditional “enterprise” languages who question the readiness and ability of PHP to scale, as well as a large population of PHP developers without formal computer science backgrounds who have learned through the hands-on experimentation while developing small and midsize applications in PHP.

While there are many books on learning PHP and developing small applications with it, there is a serious lack of information on “scaling” PHP for large-scale, business-critical systems. Schlossnagle’s Advanced PHP Programming fills that void, demonstrating that PHP is ready for enterprise Web applications by showing the reader how to develop PHP-based applications for maximum performance, stability, and extensibility.

Building Responsive Web Applications with AJAX and PHP is the most practical and efficient resource a reader can get to enter the exciting world of AJAX. This book will teach you how to create faster, lighter, better web applications by using the AJAX ingredients technologies to their full potential. Assuming a basic knowledge of PHP, XML, JavaScript and MySQL, this book will help you understand how the heart of AJAX beats and how the constituent technologies work together. After teaching the foundations, the book will walk you through eight real-world case studies covering tasks you’ll be likely to need for your own applications: - AJAX enabled form-validation page - Online chat room - Customized type-ahead text entry solution, that helps users find the help page for the PHP functions - A simple cards game that supports multiple simultaneous sessions - Whiteboard where online users can draw online - Database-enabled, editable and customizable data grid - RSS aggregator application - Use the script.aculo.us JavaScript toolkit to build a drag&drop enabled sortable list The appendixes guide you through installing your working environment, using powerful tools that enable debugging, improving, and profiling your code, working with XSLT and XPath, and working with existing AJAX frameworks.

A practical and concise book that teaches XML from the ground up. This tutorial style presents various XML methodologies and techniques in an easy to understand way, building a basis for further exploration.

XML is essentially an enabling technology, dry and boring on its own. As a result, most books on the market are dry, and academic in nature teaching theory rather than practice. This book actually teaches practical, real-world applications of XML, using the very latest version of PHP (PHP 5) as the base language.

No Nonsense XML Web Development with PHP explains how XML can be put to use in real-world projects. The book also covers buzz topics such as RSS and Web Services.

When it comes to creating dynamic web sites, the open source PHP language is red-hot property: used on more than 20 million web sites today, PHP is now more popular than Microsoft’s ASP.NET technology. With our Cookbook’s unique format, you can learn how to build dynamic web applications that work on any web browser. This revised new edition makes it easy to find specific solutions for programming challenges.

PHP Cookbook has a wealth of solutions for problems that you’ll face regularly. With topics that range from beginner questions to advanced web programming techniques, this guide contains practical examples — or “recipes” — for anyone who uses this scripting language to generate dynamic web content. Updated for PHP 5, this book provides solutions that explain how to use the new language features in detail, including the vastly improved object-oriented capabilities and the new PDO data access extension. New sections on classes and objects are included, along with new material on processing XML, building web services with PHP, and working with SOAP/REST architectures. With each recipe, the authors include a discussion that explains the logic and concepts underlying the solution.

Interested in becoming a master of the PHP language and MySQL database but don’t know where to begin? This best-selling book ranks among the most thorough and practical guides in print, covering all of the key concepts and features, and showing you how to effectively integrate PHP and MySQL to build powerful web sites.

The book begins with a vast overview of PHP’s capabilities, starting with a survey of the installation and configuration process on both the Windows and Linux platforms. Next, several chapters are devoted to basic PHP concepts, including variables, datatypes, arrays, functions, string manipulation, and processing user input. Other key PHP topics are also covered, including PEAR, session handling, LDAP integration, the Smarty templating engine, Web services, and PDO.

Next up is a presentation of MySQL’s key features. You’re first guided through MySQL’s installation and configuration process, and are presented with an introduction to its storage engines, datatypes, administration utilities, security features, and data import/export facilities. New MySQL 5–specific chapters have been added in this edition, covering triggers, stored procedures, and views. Along the way, you’ll gain insight into PHP’s assortment of MySQL functions (using both the mysql and mysqli extensions), and learn how to create and execute queries, perform searches, and carry out key database tasks from within your Web application.

What You Will Learn from This Book

• Install and configure Apache, PHP, and MySQL on both Windows and Linux.
• Accept and process information submitted via HTML forms.
• Authenticate users and track user preferences and data using PHP’s session-handling capabilities.
• Process web-based file uploads using the HTTP_Upload PEAR package.
• Create your own RSS aggregator using Magpie, and process XML files in amazingly efficient fashion using SimpleXML.
• Use both command-line and graphical MySQL clients to effectively manage your data.
• Secure the MySQL server, creating roles and restricting access even at very granular levels.
• Effectively integrate PHP and MySQL to create dynamic, data-driven web applications.