Helpful Information

Category: PHP / MySQL

PHP Resources

I want to learn PHP. What do you think are the best online tutorials or books that would help me learn PHP?

I bought the PHP Bible. Here's the amazon link (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/076454716X/qid=1052545686/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_2/002-4589969-8056022?v=glance&s=books&n=507846).

It was very thorough and easy to read.

Your best bet is to buy a book since it will give you
a structure to learn and then you can venture out after
you learn the basics.

For some quick links:

http://www.phpbeginner.com
http://www.phpcollege.com
http://www.devarticles.com
http://www.devshed.com

I suggest for a basic book on PHP, get Julie Meloni's "Fast & Easy Web development with PHP" 2nd edition.
If you go to phpbeginner.com, they have a forum for coding problems and I moderate that forum.

Hope this helps,

There is a great intro tutorial on http://www.php.net/. That should get your feet wet. Also that site is THE official reference and online manual.

When I started to get interested in PHP I went out and bought "PHP and MySQL Web Development" by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson. I've had the book for over a year now and it's been more than worth the $40 I spent on it new. It's an easy read and it also covers MySQL which is extremely useful for many applications you may want to build in PHP. I still use the book almost daily it's a great reference.

Here's the book I have: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0672317842/qid=1052701404/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/103-5585203-5515057?v=glance&s=books

Here is the second edition: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/067232525X/qid=1052701404/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-5585203-5515057?v=glance&s=books

I'm looking into learning PHP myself, and have found that Webmonkey is always a good resource.

They have a tutorial here: http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/99/21/index2a.html

Good luck!

Maida

I bought the PHP Bible. Here's the amazon link (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/076454716X/qid=1052545686/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_2/002-4589969-8056022?v=glance&s=books&n=507846).

It was very thorough and easy to read.

The PHP Bible was the first book I bought, & after having been trying to teach myself PHP using just the downloadable manual I found the PHP Bible made things a lot more clear, but it really just touches the surface of a lot of things... A great companion book to go with it is Core PHP Programming by Leon Atkinson - it covers about 95% of the functions available and goes into detail about each one and how it's used.. A couple of days ago I went and picked up the PHP Cookbook by O'Reilly which is more of a reference book, but it fills in the gaps left by the other two rather nicely.

There are some PHP forums at http://forums.devnetwork.net/ and we have a Programming section at http://www.security-forums.com with a lot of knowledgable posters there (although it doesn't focus specifically on PHP)

Personally when I need immediate help with a function, even though I have the PHP bible sitting on my desk in front of me, I will first turn to the online manual here:
http://us4.php.net/manual/en/
I do that primarily because of the comments below the base information provided by PHP and offer some great insight on what a particular function can do. With luck, if you are having a problem with a function, someone else will have had the same problem and had a solution proposed right there. Of course failing there, or from my books, www.google.com is my favorite as I have only rarely been able to find an answer to my questions on anything.