Reviews for How to Do Everything with PHP and MySQL

1. Unusable

   Rated 1 out of 5 stars, December 12th, 2009

   Unfortunately alot of the book is out of date with regards to the examples. I wouldnt recommend buying it if your tring to learn Php & MySql. Better buying a book on each subject> if you learn both languages first you wont have any problem combining them as the Php syntax is very simple and your method arguments for databse access are just SQL statements

2. Meh

   Rated 2 out of 5 stars, June 12th, 2009

   This isn't a very good book on PHP & MySql. Any learning book needs to have decent examples, as that is the only way you can learn. So to produce code that doesn't work is complete folly. This book most certainly will not explain how to do everything in PHP. It just trots out the same tired old examples as all the others, only this time they don't work!
   
   I gave up looking for a holy grail PHP / MySQL book some time ago. The only way you are going to really learn it is to just get on with it and do it. Do a google on "WAMP" and you will get a good start. If you download that, you will have a Web Server on your own PC complete with PHP and MySQL preinstalled. You can then build as may sites as you want and run them locally.

3. Well explained, well illustrated

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, April 12th, 2009

   The book takes the beginner to a proficient level... Not to thick, not too complex.... objectives well defined....
   Support various platforms :o)

4. How to do Everything with PHP & MySQL

   Rated 2 out of 5 stars, February 12th, 2009

   I bought this book on-spec from Amazon. It is only now as I'm working through it and endeavouring to make sense of it, that I've read the other reviews here.
   
   I'm afraid I agree with the more negative reviews of this book - it's a disappointment to me thus far. The book claims to be written for both the developer and importantly for `novice web developers interested in server-side scripting and database usage'. I easily fit into the latter category at this stage. I was hoping it would do, in the vernacular `what it says on the tin'. What it has done is leave me back at square one, looking elsewhere for tutorials/practice exercises in PHP.
   
   I have to assume that Vikram Vaswani knows his stuff. Indeed the opening two chapters, I found very informative and helpful. Not that I needed to install PHP or MySQL as I had already done this bit, along with the server, and had them working fine. I started to get lost in Chapter 3, then 4, then... In the end I jumped to Chapter 7 where I picked up on the shopping cart - to see if I could start making sense of it all. Too many bits of reference code in prior chapters without thorough examples of use. As an aside, my shopping cart code didn't quite work so I downloaded the code he provides off the website. Unfortunately that also threw up the same `undefined index' errors (for anyone who has used it, it is on the `add', `clear' and `update' code that a problem lies), and it would have helped me out of a jam if the book had flagged up that possibility, and what that meant.
   
   I believe Vaswani makes the common mistake of thinking that teaching or training is an easy next step from knowing your stuff. To teach (and I am a teacher of some years) one has to pitch the learning at a clear level (`basic', `intermediate', `advanced' helps). If basic, one has to get inside the learner's shoes at that level, go at a pace they can handle, offer plenty of examples of what it is one is transferring, take them by the hand so to speak to the next, intermediate, step. As a teacher or trainer you want the learner to wind up knowing as much as you - and some. I've learnt very little from it so far.
   
   This book may provide better help on the MySQL section (and indeed turn out to be a good reference book generally), but I need to get a handle on PHP from elsewhere before I can look at it again.

5. Awful lot of waffle and poor page layout

   Rated 1 out of 5 stars, August 12th, 2008

   I bought this book at the same time as PHP 6 and MySQL 5 for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide (Visual QuickPro Guides) (which has been great) and Mysql Crash Course (Sams Teach Yourself) (which is a useful reference). I'd already developed one successful website using ASP.net, and had started to learn a few little bits of php from the web.
   
   This book was the worst of my 3 purchases by a long way. It's just so boring! It was the first book I started with (because the outside looks nicest!) but inside it's just dull and badly laid out. The author may be technically competent but he rarely uses one word when he could squeeze in 3 or 4 instead. The code is annotated by comments in the lsitings, but these aren't really detailed enough to help you understand what's going on.
   
   Sadly, I put a coffee cup down on this book and it's marked the cover. Otherwise I'd have sent it back.