Anyone tried Murach's book?

PHP
1

Hi.

I would like someone to give me a review about Murach’s book on PHP which is ‘Murach’s PHP and MySQL’.

Thank you.

2

I own it and can recommend it.

Pros:

  1. Uses modern PHP techniques like PDO
  2. Most of the projects in the book use the MVC pattern. This is explained with a simple to understand, hands-on approach and enabled me for the first time to get a handle on it
  3. The book is 1/2 reference, 1/2 tutorials
  4. The reference aspect is on the right sided pages, with description on the left.
  5. PHP OOP is explained and utilized in tutorials

Cons:

  1. Some of the code doesn’t work when you run it in your browser (hate that!)
  2. Some of the tutorials are incomplete, and the author expects you to look at the downloaded completed code if you want the bigger picture
  3. Especially the very last tutorial, which the author does not go into at all, expecting you to look at the completed code yourself and figure it out

Overall I’m glad I bought the book because it strengthened my understanding of how to implement the MVC design pattern and OOP. It also makes a great reference because of it’s layout, although the book itself if physically rather thick and heavy.