Introduction

Walking through your local bookstore will show that there is definitely no shortage of books related to PHP and MySQL.  These ubiquitous technologies have been many a beginner's foray into the world of web development.  Since both are free and widely supported it's a safe bet that the software you create can be used in almost any circumstance with relative ease.  Beginning PHP and MySQL: From Novice to Professional, Third Edition is a good resource to get you started on your way.

My first contact with this book was with the second edition and I had not had very much exposure to Apress as a publisher but I did have a growing project list that required much of the LAMP stack so I grabbed a copy.  Needless to say, when the third edition was released I ordered a copy that day.  This book is one of the few that I find myself referring back to when working in web development.

The following is the breakdown of the organization of the book:

• CHAPTER 1  Introducing PHP
• CHAPTER 2  Configuring Your Environment
• CHAPTER 3  PHP Basics
• CHAPTER 4  Functions
• CHAPTER 5  Arrays
• CHAPTER 6  Object-Oriented PHP
• CHAPTER 7  Advanced OOP Features
• CHAPTER 8  Error and Exception Handling
• CHAPTER 9  Strings and Regular Expressions
• CHAPTER 10 Working with the File and Operating System
• CHAPTER 11 PEAR
• CHAPTER 12 Date and Time
• CHAPTER 13 Forms
• CHAPTER 14 Authenticating Your Users
• CHAPTER 15 Handling File Uploads
• CHAPTER 16 Networking
• CHAPTER 17 PHP and LDAP
• CHAPTER 18 Session Handlers
• CHAPTER 19 Templating with Smarty
• CHAPTER 20 Web Services
• CHAPTER 21 Secure PHP Programming
• CHAPTER 22 SQLite
• CHAPTER 23 Building Web Sites for the World
• CHAPTER 24 MVC and the Zend Framework
• CHAPTER 25 Introducing MySQL
• CHAPTER 26 Installing and Configuring MySQL
• CHAPTER 27 The Many MySQL Clients
• CHAPTER 28 MySQL Storage Engines and Datatypes
• CHAPTER 29 Securing MySQL
• CHAPTER 30 Using PHP with MySQL
• CHAPTER 31 Introducing PDO
• CHAPTER 32 Stored Routines
• CHAPTER 33 MySQL Triggers
• CHAPTER 34 MySQL Views
• CHAPTER 35 Practical Database Queries
• CHAPTER 36 Indexes and Searching 
• CHAPTER 37 Transactions
• CHAPTER 38 Importing and Exporting Data

Notable chapters that are new to this edition are Ch. 23 - Building Web Sites for the World and Ch. 24 - MVC and the Zend Framework. 

A person can see that the coverage is pretty extensive regarding both PHP and MySQL technologies.  I greatly valued the chapters on MVC as almost all new development in the web arena is focusing on design patterns and  proper coding techniques. 

The introduction to PHP is pretty solid though I would encourage somebody who has never programmed in any language before to pick up another text on the subject as this moves quickly and does not necessarily stop to explain the details that an absolute beginner may not understand.  As a refresher for those who have experience in other languages and as a reference this makes a great addition to the web dev's library.

One of the main things that I have enjoyed about this book is that even though it lends itself to be more of a reference it does not simply re-iterate what one can find in the manuals.  It has just the right amount of information to get a person started and moving along well and makes a great jumping off point for those who need to expand beyond the text discussion.

If I could fault the book for anything it would be that it lacks a proper discussion of database design.  I wouldn't expect a detailed discussion on normalization but a few important hints and gotchas would come in very handy for those starting out with database design.  I will note that if you are interested in a book detailing database design APress has another book Beginning Database Design by Clare Churcher that is a great introduction to the topic.

All in all W. Jason Gilmore has done an excellent job of bringing a wide ranging topics into a manageable size and retaining much of the value for later use.

Title:  Beginning PHP and MySQL: From Novice to Professional, Third Edition
Author: W. Jason Gilmore
ISBN: 1-59059-862-8
Website: http://apress.com/book/view/9781590598627