Professional PHP4 Programming

Wrox Press

February 8, 2002

This manuscript is an excerpt from the Wrox Press book Professional PHP4 Programming.

PHP is an open source, server-side HTML-embedded web-scripting language for creating dynamic web pages. Outside of being browser-independent, it offers a simple and universal cross- platform solution for e-commerce, complex web, and database- driven applications.

Professional PHP4 will show you exactly how to create state of the art web applications that scale well, utilize databases optimally, and connect to a back-end network using a multi-tiered approach. This book also aims at teaching PHP by coding � among other things � FTP clients, e-mail clients, some advanced data structures, session management, and secure programming.

What does this book cover?

The whys and wherefores of PHP4
PHP installation on *nix, Windows, and MacOS X
Sessions and cookies, coding FTP clients, network-related function calls, and directory services
PHP support for LDAP
Multi-tiered development using PHP
PHP's interaction with XML
PHP with MySQL
PHP with PostgreSQL and ODBC
Securing, optimizing, and internationalizing PHP applications
PHP extension libraries
A real world employee directory, an online library application, and a GTK interface to the application
Case studies on a user privilege system and a multi-tiered WML-based shopping cart

Who is this book for?

This book is a resource for working PHP developers who want to take their skills to the next level. Although it assumes a conceptual familiarity with programming and databases in general, anyone who knows PHP enough to code and maintain small web applications can use this book. We also assume an interest in designing large web sites and general network programming to make full use of this book.