General Description
A small book about PHP, packed with images and code snippets. It has six chapters, each of which I’ll describe in more detail below. The reading difficulty is light, and you can finish it in a couple of evenings.
Brief Overview
So here are the main topics I pulled from the table of contents.
- Installing PHP extensions for database work
- Concept of unified data‑access functions
- Accessing MySQL databases
- 3.1 PHP functions for working with MySQL databases
- 3.2 Creating helper functions for MySQL
- 3.3 Creating the MyExecNonQuery function
- 3.4 Creating the MyExecQuery function
- Accessing Microsoft SQL Server databases
- 4.1 PHP functions for accessing Microsoft SQL
- 4.2 Creating helper functions for Microsoft SQL
- 4.3 Creating the MsExecNonQuery function
- 4.4 Creating the MsExecQuery function
- Accessing Firebird databases
- 5.1 PHP functions for accessing Firebird
- 5.2 Creating helper functions for Firebird
- 5.3 Creating the FbExecNonQuery function
- 5.4 Creating the FbExecQuery function
- Accessing PostgreSQL databases
- 6.1 PHP functions for accessing PostgreSQL
- 6.2 Creating helper functions for PostgreSQL
- 6.3 Creating the PgExecNonQuery function
- 6.4 Creating the PgExecQuery function
In addition, the book ends with four appendices that contain function listings.
Opinion
If you want to dive deeper into working with PHP and databases like MySQL, Microsoft SQL, Firebird, and PostgreSQL without using any ORM or other layers, this book will be useful to you. Otherwise, I find it not very informative. The book is very narrowly focused, and even within that scope the covered topics aren’t explored in depth. Also, the appendices with standard function listings feel somewhat useless to me, because such information is always better checked in the primary sources and official sites, especially since new PHP functions appear and old ones become obsolete.
