Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache in 24 Hours - which version?

Dr_Evil2

Hey everyone, I'm just starting out with PHP and databases etc and I'm about to go out and buy a book - Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache in 24 Hours - it was recommended to me by someone but theres one main thing I need to know about it that I haven't been able to find out - what version of PHP does it teach you? I don't wanna go out and by a $70 book only to find it's teaching me some dated version that no webservers are running. If anyone knows any detail about this, PLEASE let me know.

Thanking you in advance, Dr.Evil.

dalecosp

Good thought, but I wouldn't worry TOO much about this. PHP is a scripting language, and while new things are added with each version, it'd be rare that anything written prior to now would teach stuff that you couldn't do with PHP. Concepts and most functions and language constructs don't change. There are a couple of things to watch for. If the code examples in the book are coded for "register_globals=ON" you will need to do some further reading on the web to adjust for the fact that PHP is now shipped with RG=OFF by default. I'm not sure whether any of the books have yet caught up with this, though.

Secondly, a lot of web hosts only give you one database, named after your username, and lots of books don't take this into account, so you may need to do some tweaking of SQL scripts.

As an aside, I liked Larry Ullman's PHP and the World Wide Web as my first book; Peachpit Press , less than $30 US. Of course, it doesn't cover Apache at all....

coenen

I bought the same book and I must say that it is a great book. Good examples and it covers every thing that you need to know if you start.

It learns you a bit of SQL in combination with PHP and how to install everything. Plus you get a CD with the book with an installation of MySQL, PHP and APACHE for linux and windows!

If I may say so, I recommend this book very strongly!

Greetingz!

TruckStuff

More along the lines of "things that books say that aren't good ideas":

Do not use session_register() or session_unregister(). Most books I've seen use these functions to create session variables. Instead of using these, use code like $_SESSION['var'] = $value.

coenen

If you read this book, you see that they recommend this use of $_SESSION!