{"id":121,"date":"2006-10-17T16:01:15","date_gmt":"2006-10-17T21:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/2006\/book-review-php-cookbook-2nd-edition\/"},"modified":"2006-10-17T18:34:27","modified_gmt":"2006-10-17T23:34:27","slug":"book-review-php-cookbook-2nd-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/2006\/book-review-php-cookbook-2nd-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: PHP Cookbook 2nd edition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The &#8216;cookbook&#8217; series from O&#8217;reilly press target a reader who understands (at least) the basics of a subject, these are not good books for beginners. This is the 2nd edition and covers PHP 5.<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=wwwmontrealma-20&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=0596101015&#038;fc1=000000&#038;IS2=1&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;lc1=0000FF&#038;bc1=000000&#038;bg1=FFFFFF&#038;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>PHP Cookbook presents PHP by task rather than by language construct. For example:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Accessing Substrings<\/li>\n<li>Controlling Case<\/li>\n<li>Parsing Comma-Separated Data<\/li>\n<li>Taking String Apart<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The above list is taken from chapter 1 on strings. You&#8217;ll notice that there are no function names listed, but rather string related tasks. <\/p>\n<p>That style of organising and presenting the material by common task, makes &#8216;PHP Cookbook&#8217; very handy for any PHP programmer. <\/p>\n<p>In my experience as a web developer, there have been many times when I would have <strong>a task<\/strong> to preform but wasn&#8217;t exactly sure how best to handle it &#8230; a book like this allows you to flip around and find what you need.<\/p>\n<p><strong>YOU WILL LEARN THINGS TOO!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Besides showing how to preform common tasks with PHP, PHP Cookbook also does a good job discussing PHP concepts and aspects about the language &#8211; for example:<\/p>\n<p>What is the difference between <strong>ereg<\/strong> and <strong>preg<\/strong>? <\/p>\n<p>We learn that <strong>preg<\/strong> works more like Perl regular expressions, where the function also needs <em>delimiters<\/em> &#8211; you will have to get the book to learn more!<\/p>\n<p><strong>HOW THE RECIPIES\/EXAMPLES ARE STRUCTURED:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Each recipe is broken down into three subsections:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Problem &#8211; a simple statement of what we are trying to do.<\/li>\n<li>Solution &#8211; a concise code snippet (usually)  doing what we need to do.<\/li>\n<li>Discussion &#8211; shedding more light on the subject at hand.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><strong>CONCLUSION<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I like the &#8216;cookbook&#8217; series of books. If you are a PHP programmer, I know this is a book you probably should have sitting on your desk.<\/p>\n<p>Stefan Mischook<\/p>\n<p>www.killersites.com<br \/>\nwww.killerphp.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The &#8216;cookbook&#8217; series from O&#8217;reilly press target a reader who understands (at least) the basics of a subject, these are not good books for beginners. This is the 2nd edition and covers PHP 5. PHP Cookbook presents PHP by task rather than by language construct. For example: Accessing Substrings Controlling Case Parsing Comma-Separated Data Taking &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}