PHP Book

[austinrock000]

Hey, I've been wanting to learn PHP for awhile now, and since this seems like a good time to me, do any of you have suggestions for a good book to get?

[Dynasty]

Personally speaking I learned from one of those teach yourself in 24 hour books, and it does give a nice starting point, but you learn a lot more by loking around the net for tutorials, and also in the helpfile, after you actually read the book.

[designersblock]

I found a book for $19.99 and ite pretty useful. I bought it and its better than my other php books I've learned alot.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/textbooks/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?userid=0E84O8LKWW&isbn=0201727870

maybe when you learned what that book has to offer try

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=0E84O8LKWW&isbn=0201775972

[BoR|S]

I have 'Professional PHP Programming' by WROX... but I don't use it too often, as dbindel said, online tutorials and message boards are the best to learn PHP...

[austinrock000]

Thanks for your answers, you've been very helpful.

[BoR|S]

Also logon to http://www.amazon.com and type 'PHP' in the search area...

[wizbug]

I started learing PHP from scratch from a book by Larry Ullman titled "PHP FOR THE WORLD WIDE WEB" there are also links u should visit that contain a lot of information for beginners at www.php.net and www.devshed.com

[EnwTheGood]

Acutally, what I would suggest is doing without the book and just concentrating on the following:

Learning basic C commands and syntax.

Doing the extremely short PHP intro tutorial at php.net

Check websites (such as devshed.com) which have good, useful PHP articles.

Refer to the excellent documentation at PHP.net whenever you need to do something.

[stevejrice]

Hi All,
while I agree in principal that you can get all you need from the internet (and you certainly can), a real good book that I have found invaluable because of it's very practical approach to Apache, PHP and mySQL and their use in website production is:
PHP and MySQL Web Development by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson
Published by Sams: ISBN 0-672-31784
An excellent book with a CD included which has versions of all software, slightly out of date but at least they all work together and you can upgrade if you wish. Mentioned earlier, I wouldn't upgrade Apache to version 2 yet. Definite problems getting it to work.

[pezland]

I think at least in the very beginning you should learn from a book, to get comfortable with the syntax, database/file interactions, etc. I started out with PHP Essentials by Julie C. Meloni as my (very, very.... very) basic primer, which is really all it took to get started, and its a fairly small book, a night's reading. I also got a reference book along with it, such as Core PHP Programming, which helped with the major functions. It only took a day or two for me to know enough to start coding websites.

Of course PHP changes rapidly so they weren't much use after a few months, but by then you already know the language and are ready to learn the new additions to it through online tutorials and the like.