Seen the question asked so many times, I'd like to just get a thread going to list php books to suggest to people. If you know of a good book, please list it here. If you know of a thread that lists good books, go ahead and post that. Need something that can be updated as new php versions come out, so hopefully we can just centralize it here and point people off to this thread and get it into the FAQ's.

First one I usually plug is the one from the good people around here. It's the only php book I own though, so maybe it's just a little biased 😃

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0764557440/qid=1090859312/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/002-0959244-0436828?v=glance&s=books

    Is this restricted to PHP books, or are Apache, HTML, XML, MySQL etc. books also welcome. If they're not, please don't feel guilty I'm sure there are friendly fields where they can skip and play. <weepy violin />

      Well, I hadn't planned on any rules....
      I'd just say that if you're going to post something that doesn't have anything to do with php, just mark it that way in your post. Maybe a little comment at the top saying "This doesn't pertain to php" or something.

        A book which I don't often come back to but I'm just about to read through again (it's not really very usefull as a reference book) and I think is an incredibly helpfull text is Oreilly's Mastering Regular Expressions.

        Second on my list is a book which has been an excellent reference for everything from DTDs to Schemas, CSS to XSL-FO and all the rest in the world of XML. I've only had the opporunity to make use of it's knowledge in my tiny little apps so far but I can't see myself putting this bok down for more than two weeks for a long time. It's Oreilly's XML In A Nutshell

        Last but by no means least is a book which I have found invaluable for about three years now. It's a Linux guide by the renowned (apparently, I'd never heard of him before) Unix author Mark Sobell. It's divided into two sections, a tutorial based guide to start with and a reference to all the most common Linux commands for seconds. It's A Practical Guide to Linux

        I have recently ordered Oreilly's PHP Cookbok on Piersk's recomendation (so I know who I'll be comming after if it's not up to scratch 😉) and pre-ordered Oreilly's Upgrading to PHP5. I'll let Piersk sin the praises of the former as he did it so well and let you know how the latter turns out when I'm done with it.

          Any other suggestions?
          I need something more advance.....
          about PHP and MySQL....

          P.S

          What about "Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL: From Novice to Professional"
          looks good. please answer soon cuz I think i'm going to buy it
          tomorrow...
          Thanks guys!

            MySQL (New Riders) by Paul Dubois and Teach Yourself PHP (SAMS). SAMS also do a combined MySQL and PHP book, I think, that would be good to get upto and including a little OOP.

            Beyond that, there's the PHP Developer's Cookbook (SAMS) although check the edition. I've got one printed in 2003 that hasn't got superglobals taken into account.

              Anybody know about the book that I mentioned?
              Its new and It's about PHP5 so thats good.....
              And It has good reviews. Although its first edition...
              Please anybody recommend it? Does somebody read it?
              I think i'm going to buy it today. Please answer soon.

                Originally posted by LordShryku
                Well, I hadn't planned on any rules....

                Well, on the subject of pron then ... :p

                  Originally posted by uri92
                  Anybody know about the book that I mentioned?
                  Its new and It's about PHP5 so thats good.....
                  And It has good reviews. Although its first edition...
                  Please anybody recommend it? Does somebody read it?
                  I think i'm going to buy it today. Please answer soon.

                  I havent personally read it or its reviews but from the table of contents it doesnt look too bad however from its publication date there has been some changes within PHP 5

                    I remembered
                    That I've wanted to ask this a long time ago:
                    Know the forum system phpBB? They use a template
                    system that I didn't saw in any book. i'm not talking about
                    including footer and header. im talking about defining varibles
                    in a php file and using them in a .tpl file like this:

                    <html>
<head>
<title> {title}
</title>
{meta}
</head>
<body bgcolor={bgcol}>

                    Got it? you define in a php file the arrys/varibles
                    and actualy display them in "{}" in the .tpl files.
                    Anybody know about that?

                      If you have a question ask it in one of the help forums. If you're asking about books on phpbb then I'd have to say I doubt it. A search for computer books on Amazon using phpbb as the keyword turned up absolutely nothing.

                        Originally posted by uri92

                        Anybody know about that?

                        Yup. Been around for yonks. Especially popular among Perl programmers (Slashdot is one example). One such templating system (written in Perl) was called PHP/FI and got really comprehensive with all sorts of funky things you could do with in your templates, so for maintainability and performance reasons it was eventually rewritten in C, and renamed to PHP 3.

                          Originally posted by bubblenut
                          I have recently ordered Oreilly's PHP Cookbok on Piersk's recomendation (so I know who I'll be comming after if it's not up to scratch 😉)

                          /me plans to leave the country :p

                          I'll let Piersk sin the praises of the former as he did it so well and let you know how the latter turns out when I'm done with it.

                          Why thank you kind sir. Tis a good book, but definately not for a beginner because it dowsn't really go into any details about PHP itself. It's more of a recipe book (hence the name) with the recipes being already written scripts that are then dissected to see how they work. Good bit on XML/SOAP/RSS and PEAR too

                            Originally posted by bubblenut
                            If you have a question ask it in one of the help forums. If you're asking about books on phpbb then I'd have to say I doubt it. A search for computer books on Amazon using phpbb as the keyword turned up absolutely nothing.

                            Thats not what im talking about.
                            I'm talking about a book that uses the same template system.
                            A book that uses the template() functions and how do use them.

                              Originally posted by uri92
                              A book that uses the template() functions and how do use them.

                              You may be able to find a book that uses Smarty, PHP's template system. It's a bit more advanced than that, though.

                                I'm pretty sure that the O'Reilly Cookbook that bubblenut and I were talkin about earlier has a bit about Smarty in it.

                                The Smarty subsite has a good crash course.

                                  Thank you!
                                  Thats exactly what i'm talking about!
                                  THANKS!

                                    I've pretty much worn the cover off of "PHP and MySQL Web Development" by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson (SAMS). I use it a lot, but it's pretty big and cumbersome. I just ordered "The PHP Anthology, Volume II: Applications" by Harry Fuecks (sitepoint) and now wish I'd order Volume I as well. I occasionally pull down my O'Reilley books, but not that often. I can usually find what I'm looking for in the Welling/Thomson book. I'm not saying it's a great book, but it's a good beginner book.

                                    I need an intermediate/advanced book to take me to the next level.