[PHP] Re: PHP Books - A poll of sorts
Jay Blanchard wrote: If there was a best practices book would you buy it? I write books on PHP aimed at the beginner/intermediate level, and have a considerable collection of PHP books written by others. Two relatively recent books that struck me as being important are Pro PHP Security by Chris Snyder and Michael Southwell, and Essential PHP Security by Chris Shiflett. (I know there's also php|architect's Guide to PHP Security by Ilia Ashanetsky and Rasmus Lerdorf, but I haven't read it.) The thing that struck me most about the books was that anyone thought there should be a need for them. Of course, there is a need - that's why they were written. However, surely security should be taught from the very beginning? Every book on PHP (or any other language) should be a best practices book. The problem is that books are written by human beings, who are prone to mistakes (myself included), and whose own view of best practice might leave gaps in security. The other problem is that a lot of people who use PHP just want to copy and paste a script that works. Even if the ready-made script has been designed with security in mind, using it without understanding *how* it works can lead to unforeseen problems. By the way, I would welcome constructive criticism of the scripts in my books. I have tried to incorporate what I perceive to be the best practices at the time of writing, but I'm sure there's room for improvement. -- David Powers -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
[PHP] Re: PHP Books - A poll of sorts
We all have our favorite PHP books and resources but there is one tome that seems to be missing from the group...a best practices book. We PHP, being server-side, is not difficult. I think the client-side stuff deserves some books (DOM, Javascript, CSS, XHTML, XML, ) if you want to save time. -- @~@ Might, Courage, Vision, SINCERITY. / v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you! /( _ )\ (Xubuntu 7.04) Linux 2.6.22.2 ^ ^ 19:44:01 up 5 days 6:30 0 users load average: 0.05 0.06 0.02 news://news.3home.net news://news.hkpcug.org news://news.newsgroup.com.hk -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: PHP Books - A poll of sorts
On Aug 15, 2007, at 4:28 AM, David Powers wrote: Jay Blanchard wrote: If there was a best practices book would you buy it? I write books on PHP aimed at the beginner/intermediate level, and have a considerable collection of PHP books written by others. Two relatively recent books that struck me as being important are Pro PHP Security by Chris Snyder and Michael Southwell, and Essential PHP Security by Chris Shiflett. (I know there's also php|architect's Guide to PHP Security by Ilia Ashanetsky and Rasmus Lerdorf, but I haven't read it.) The thing that struck me most about the books was that anyone thought there should be a need for them. Of course, there is a need - that's why they were written. However, surely security should be taught from the very beginning? Every book on PHP (or any other language) should be a best practices book. The problem is that books are written by human beings, who are prone to mistakes (myself included), and whose own view of best practice might leave gaps in security. The other problem is that a lot of people who use PHP just want to copy and paste a script that works. Even if the ready-made script has been designed with security in mind, using it without understanding *how* it works can lead to unforeseen problems. By the way, I would welcome constructive criticism of the scripts in my books. I have tried to incorporate what I perceive to be the best practices at the time of writing, but I'm sure there's room for improvement. If I can add some stuff here; I have done a lot of php/javascript programming from scratch and being self taught, without good texts on the subject in addition to the php manual, I would be at a loss. Copying and pasting code is kind of like being a commercial designer who never does original art but just use stock stuff and crams it into templates. That should be the difference between a pro developer and 'paste up' artist. Inevitably, even copied and pasted code has to be adapted for a particular use, other wise it boarders on theft. Even if you do use open source you do not have to be a charity (albeit, I have not made any money at it to speak of). I would like to think that the money I have spent on books, lining authors' and publishers pockets, the money I have spent on commercial software from Adobe, Quark, etc, etc, and the thousands of dollars I have spent on computer hardware over the years has not been in vain (even though I have no ' meal ticket' with student loans that may take the rest of my life to pay off and won't ever be guaranteed that that investment would pay for itself). Just my two cents. Jeff K -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
[PHP] Re: PHp Books
Hello Rajani, On 10 Feb 2004 at 12:36, Rajani Anand Iyer wrote: Can someone recommend some good books on PHP Advanced topics. Well, I can advise you on what not to buy, which should help, too. Don't spend your money on Professional PHP4 (Argerich, Choi, Coggeshall, Egervari, Geisler, Greant, Hill, Hubbard, Moore, O'Dell, Parise, Rawat, Sani, Scollo, Thomas Ullman): it's mostly badly written and the really relevant stuff is not clearly explained; you get the feeling (probably pretty accurate) that the book was banged out by a bunch of programmers who cannot write good English and have no experience teaching or explaining things to others or even building a logical argument, for that matter. Don't go near XML and PHP (Vaswani), either. Also badly written and already outdated. In addition, the book doesn't give you any information that you could not easily find on the web. If you already know the basics about manipulating XML with PHP, you won't learn anything new from this book, either. I recently bought Secure PHP Development (Kabir) and it seems to be interesting, but I haven't yet found the time to get past the introduction and a first browse, so I can't really recommend it. But you might want to have a look at its table of contents and a few reviews. Cheers, Erik -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
[PHP] Re: PHp Books
Rajani Anand Iyer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Can someone recommend some good books on PHP Advanced topics. here is my (amazon) list http://www.templatetamer.org/index.php?RecommendedBooks rush -- http://www.templatetamer.com/ -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: PHP Books
Hi, all -- ...and then rotsky said... % ... % 'PHP Developer's Cookbook' - Sterling Hughes with contributions by Andrei % Zmievski (Sams). Still playing with this one. Definitely not for beginners % as it assumes (IMHO) a fairly well-developed familiarity with PHP concepts % and procedures and general wirehead argot. But I get the feeling that I'll % be turning to this one more and more as it is a resource of solutions to % specific problems. I have this as well, and I like it but I find it too limited. That is, I get some good examples, and they cover a lot of ground, but it's not at all a reference book. I'm a perl guy as well, and I compare it to the Perl Cookbook (which itself covers much more ground than the PHP Dev CB) rather than a nice fat reference *and* instruction book like Programming Perl. I must be a wirehead, since I hadn't touched PHP when I got the book and I kept up if not outpaced it as I worked through it :-0 HTH HAND :-D -- David T-G * There is too much animal courage in (play) [EMAIL PROTECTED] * society and not sufficient moral courage. (work) [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health http://justpickone.org/davidtg/ Shpx gur Pbzzhavpngvbaf Qrprapl Npg! pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
[PHP] Re: PHP Books
Don't know any of those but the books I have experience with so far (as a newbie with less than 2 weeks' PHP experience and next-to-no programming experience generally): 'Programming PHP' - Rasmus Lerdorf Kevin Tatroe (O'Reilly) - straight from the horse's mouth, as it were. Excellent book which quickly demystified sessions and security issues for me. Still grappling with the Objects chapter, but getting there. It's not a beginner's book to programming, but does a good job of explaining PHP. Highly recommended. 'PHP MySQL for Dummies' - Janet Valade - not a bad primer, but I very quickly outgrew it. Found I was working stuff out for myself before I got to the relevant chapters in the book. 'PHP Developer's Cookbook' - Sterling Hughes with contributions by Andrei Zmievski (Sams). Still playing with this one. Definitely not for beginners as it assumes (IMHO) a fairly well-developed familiarity with PHP concepts and procedures and general wirehead argot. But I get the feeling that I'll be turning to this one more and more as it is a resource of solutions to specific problems. About to delve into 'Web Database Applications with PHP MySQL' - Hugh Williams David Lane (O'Reilly), which I think is looking promising. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
[PHP] Re: PHP Books
I've invested quite heavily in php books, the 2 most useful by a long way are: 1) Programming PHP, O'Reilly, Rasmus Lerdorf Kevin Tatroe - a truly superb book; its concise, well written and just seems to hit the mark. A must for any aspiring php programmer! 2) PHP Functions, Essential Reference, New Riders; as it says on the tin - its a php function reference. Ok, one can use the php manual and I even believe that this book is online, but it doesn't beat, in my view, having the thing on the desk next to you As well being convenient the functions are particularly well explained with descent examples (from which I've borrowed heavily towards my own code) 2 honourable mentions: 1) Web Database Applications with Php and MySQL, O'Reilly - some good insights and a great coverage of sessions; however is a tad verbose and I am not too hot on the case study presented throughout the book. Well worth buying though. 2) Web Application Development with PHP 4.0; this is an interesting read though is not so good if you are just starting out due to its advanced nature; it also shows its age in places Happy reading!! David Eisenhart. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
