Anonymous
Posted Fri Dec 01 00:00:00 EST 2006
A handy thing about Bacon's book is the CD with the full source code for the 8 applications referred to in the title. This lets him in the narrative concentrate on the key points in building each application. Since you should know from your own experience that any nontrivial app has tons of routine code. The problem is finding (or writing) the crucial code snippets, that encapsulate the key operations. The examples he gives have been deliberately chosen to be as useful as possible to a wide readership. Like making a shopping cart. Which obviously necessitates hooking to a database with item descriptions and prices. These can be often read only. But the database also needs to be written to, with the user's purchase and various data that the user enters about herself, like a shipping address. The shopping cart is the archetypal example for ecommerce websites. On perhaps a more casual note, another chapter describes how to make a blogging website. No ecommerce here. But there is still a need to read and write to a back end database. You should be aware that the book is not primarily meant to be a first text in either PHP or MySQL. Ideally, you will come to it with some background in both. Its task is to demonstrate how to integrate the two. Frankly, the method of writing PHP commands as HTML comments into an HTML web page (=file) is a total kludge. But that's scarcely the author's fault. It's an ingenious approach used industry wide. Purists in writing source code in some language can reasonably decry the typical code shown in the text. Pragmatically, it works and you should get used to this style.
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More About This Textbook
Overview
"Practical PHP and MySQL reflects Jono's commitment to the spirit of making open source subjects accessible to everyone. The book carefully walks you through the code for eight useful, dynamic Web applications. Projects are presented in a playful way, like the forum project that touts horror movies that make you 'hide behind the couch.'"
-From the Foreword by Christopher Negus, Series Editor, Negus Live Linux Series
Build Dynamic Web Sites Fast, with PHP and MySQL...
Learn from Eight Ready-to-Run Applications!
Suddenly, it’s easy to build commercial-quality Web applications using free and open source software. With this book, you’ll learn from eight ready-to-run, real-world applications—all backed by clear diagrams and screenshots, well-documented code, and simple, practical explanations.
Leading open source author Jono Bacon teaches the core skills you’ll need to build virtually any application. You’ll discover how to connect with databases, upload content, perform cascading deletes, edit records, validate registrations, specify user security, create reusable components, use PEAR extensions, and even build Ajax applications.
Working from complete examples on the CD-ROM, you’ll create
JONO BACON is Ubuntu community manager for Canonical, Ubuntu’s sponsor. He is an established speaker, author, and contributor to the open source community. Bacon co-authored Linux Desktop Hacks and The Official Ubuntu Book; has served as a columnist for Linux Format, Linux User & Developer, and PC Plus; and is an O’Reilly Networkweblog author. He is a lead developer onthe Jokosher (www.jokosher.org) project,and co-founder of LUGRadio—a podcastwith more than 15,000 listeners, andan annual event that attracts visitorsfrom around the world.
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Meet the Author
Jono Bacon works for Canonical as the Ubuntu community manager and is an established speaker, author, and regular contributor to the Open Source community. As an author, Bacon co-authored Linux Desktop Hacks and the Official Ubuntu Book, and has written more than 400 published articles in more than 14 publications. Bacon has also contributed as a columnist for Linux Format, Linux User & Developer, and PC Plus, and is an O’Reilly Network weblog author.
In addition, Bacon is a regular contributor to Open Source in a range of projects, a lead developer on the Jokosher (www.jokosher.org) project, and one of the co-founders of the popular LUGRadio (www.lugradio.org) podcast–a show with more than 15,000 listeners and an annual event that pulls visitors from around the world.
Read an Excerpt
ForewordForeword
Listen to podcasts by Jono Bacon and friends at LUG Radio (http://www.lugradio.org) and you get a sense of both the spirit and thoughtfulness Jono brings to the open source community. At one moment they speak seriously about hurdles in contributing code to free software projects, while the next they offer a Monty Python-like discussion on which Linux distribution each of them most resembles.
Practical PHP and MySQL reflects Jono's commitment to the spirit of making open source subjects accessible to everyone. The book carefully walks you through the code for eight useful, dynamic Web applications. Projects are presented in a playful way, like the forum project that touts horror movies that make you "hide behind the couch." And everything in the book can be run live, modified, saved, and reused from the included live CD.
Although the tools you need to create Web content are readily available from the open source community, having a skillful guide like Jono Bacon to help you create dynamic Web applications from those tools is a real treat. The results form a foundation for developing your own blogs, forums, shopping carts, and other Web destinations that should significantly cut your startup time.
I am thrilled to have Jono Bacon's Practical PHP and MySQL as one of the first books in the Negus Live Linux Series. Its content perfectly suits the goals of the series to put quality free and open source software covering various topics into peoples' hands so they can quickly get high-quality results. I hope you enjoy learning from this book as much as I have.
—Christopher Negus
Series Editor, Negus LiveLinux Series
© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
Foreword xi
About the Author xii
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 A New Approach 5
Chapter 2 Getting Started with PHP and MySQL 15
Chapter 3 Running the Projects 53
Chapter 4 Building a Weblog 63
Chapter 5 Discussion Forums 111
Chapter 6 Creating a Shopping Cart 169
Chapter 7 Building an Online Auction Site 219
Chapter 8 Creating a Web-Based Calendar 265
Chapter 9 FAQ Content Management System 303
Chapter 10 Building a Re-Usable Project 379
Chapter 11 Building a News Web Site 425
Appendix A Web Site Design 469
Index 499
Preface
Foreword
Listen to podcasts by Jono Bacon and friends at LUG Radio (http://www.lugradio.org) and you get a sense of both the spirit and thoughtfulness Jono brings to the open source community. At one moment they speak seriously about hurdles in contributing code to free software projects, while the next they offer a Monty Python-like discussion on which Linux distribution each of them most resembles.
Practical PHP and MySQL reflects Jono's commitment to the spirit of making open source subjects accessible to everyone. The book carefully walks you through the code for eight useful, dynamic Web applications. Projects are presented in a playful way, like the forum project that touts horror movies that make you "hide behind the couch." And everything in the book can be run live, modified, saved, and reused from the included live CD.
Although the tools you need to create Web content are readily available from the open source community, having a skillful guide like Jono Bacon to help you create dynamic Web applications from those tools is a real treat. The results form a foundation for developing your own blogs, forums, shopping carts, and other Web destinations that should significantly cut your startup time.
I am thrilled to have Jono Bacon's Practical PHP and MySQL as one of the first books in the Negus Live Linux Series. Its content perfectly suits the goals of the series to put quality free and open source software covering various topics into peoples' hands so they can quickly get high-quality results. I hope you enjoy learning from this book as much as I have.
—Christopher Negus
Series Editor, Negus Live Linux Series
© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.