Most great programming books sway far more toward the realm of the practical than of the academic. Although I have no illusions regarding my place among the great technical authors of our time, it is always my goal to write with this point in mind, producing material that you can apply to your own situation. Given the size of this book, it’s probably apparent that I attempted to squeeze out every last drop of such practicality from the subject matter. That said, if you’re interested in gaining practical and comprehensive insight into the PHP programming language and MySQL database server, and how these prominent technologies can be used together to create dynamic, database-driven Web applications, this book is for you.
The feverish work of the respective PHP and MySQL communities prompted this new edition, and with it considerable changes over the previous edition. In addition to updating the material to reflect features found in PHP 6 and the latest MySQL releases, two new chapters have been added. Chapter 23 shows you how to create Web sites for the world by taking advantage of open source internationalization and localization tools. Chapter 24 introduces the popular Zend Framework, a great solution for building powerful Web applications. Furthermore, all existing chapters have been carefully revised, and in some cases heavily modified, to both update and improve upon the previous edition’s material.
If you’re new to PHP, I recommend beginning with Chapter 1, because gaining the fundamental knowledge presented therein will be of considerable benefit to you when you’re reading later chapters. If you know PHP but are new to MySQL, consider beginning with Chapter 25. Intermediate and advanced readers are invited to jump around as necessary; after all, this isn’t a romance novel. Regardless of your reading strategy, I’ve attempted to compartmentalize the material found in each chapter so that you can quickly learn each topic without having to necessarily master other chapters beyond those that concentrate on the technology fundamentals.