MySQL/PHP Database Applications

Jay Greenspan & Brad Bulger

Language: English

Publisher: Wiley

Published: Jan 29, 2001

Description:

More businesses and ambitious individuals are trying to bring applications to the Web but they are bewildered with the array of components and concepts needed to create a data-driven site. The cost, stability and ease of development using the Open Source PHP 4 scripting language and a MySQL database makes this combination the best choice for small and mid-size Web-based applications. PHP4/MySQL Database Applications demonstrates web-application development by presenting seven real, ready-to-use examples starting with a simple guess book and ending with a fully-functional e-commerce site with a shopping cart. Inexperienced users will learn the essentials of working with PHP4 and MySQL so they can start building and customizing database applications for the web right away!

Amazon.com Review

How could the combination of PHP and MySQL--which is feature-rich, highly reliable combination, capable of dealing with large traffic volumes, and absolutely free of charge in most cases--be any better? In MySQL/PHP Database Applications, Jay Greenspan and Brad Bulger explain how to work with the capable pair, primarily for applications you might use on a Web site. If you take the time to study the advice and work through your own tests of the concepts presented, it's pretty much certain that you'll walk away with the knowledge you need to do serious development work with the PHP scripting language and the MySQL database server.

Rather than make up trivial programs just to illustrate aspects of the MySQL/PHP environment, this book features code snippets, each half a page or so in length, that illustrate the behavior of key code structures. For example, in explaining conditional statements in PHP, the book gives you a no-frills IF statement with real values in place. It's not always obvious how the code structures will behave in practice, but the book does a consistently good job of commenting intelligently on the place of each aspect of the language in a well-designed application. The latter half of the book attacks specific problems--a chat system, a guest book, and so on--and walks through the setup of MySQL and each important PHP function for each. --David Wall

Topics covered: The PHP server-side scripting language and the MySQL database server, explained for people who have neither a lot of database administration background nor programming experience. Matters of creating and querying databases, and of performing simple and advanced operations with PHP scripting, are covered adroitly.

From the Back Cover

MySQL/PHP Database Applications Affordable Open Source Solutions to E-Commerce Challenges In this unique guide, two Web development gurus show you how to harness the open source power of MySQL and PHP — and create high-performance Web database applications that won't break the bank. Using plenty of ready-to-run code and seven concrete examples — from a simple guestbook to a not-so-simple shopping cart — they walk you step-by-step through the process of building a MySQL database and writing real-world PHP applications. Best of all, they provide you with MySQL, PHP, and all their examples on the CD-ROM — which means that you're holding in your hands everything you need to jump-start an e-commerce project. Create High-Performance Database Applications for the Web

  • Find out what MySQL offers — and doesn't
  • Get up to speed on normal forms and other MySQL basics
  • Build MySQL tables with Structured Query Language
  • Extract database information with MySQL selects and functions
  • Work with PHP variables, control structures, and functions
  • Get tips on writing good code and using object-oriented techniques
  • Create simple applications: a guestbook and a survey
  • Develop more sophisticated applications: a catalog, a content manager, a threaded discussion, a problem tracking system, and a shopping cart
  • Discover helpful appendixes on HTML forms, MySQL utilities, PHP functions, and more

Bonus CD-ROM Includes

  • MySQL 3.23
  • PHP 4.0.3
  • Apache 1.3.12
  • PHP classes, libraries, utilities, and other tools
  • Ready-to-run code and example applications from the book

System Requirements PC running Windows 95 or later, Windows NT 4 or later, Linux or Unix. See Appendix J for more details and requirements. www.mandtbooks.com