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JamesH

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Jun 25, 2006
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One of my goals for the summer is to learn how to program in PHP/MySQL. The only other 'language' I know is HTML and CSS. What are some good books to use to learn PHP?

Also, what are some good bedtime books? Since the one thing that all successful people share is the fact that they read every day, I figured I'd do the same thing - couldn't hurt...
 


Tizag is nice, but I like this one:

http://www.sitepoint.com/books/phpmysql4/

It has a ton of examples, and generally gives you a lot of very practical uses.

For future reference, I'd start working with ODP when dealing with MySQL since that'd allow you to port all your scripts much easier later on if you wanted to use another database or swapped some code into another language.
 
Read [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Simply-SQL-Rudy-Limeback/dp/0980455251"]Simply SQL[/ame]. It's an easy read and I actually found it very interesting. Especially since it covers a little bit of MSSQL and Oracle methods as well as MySQL.
 
JamesH said:
One of my goals for the summer is to learn how to program in PHP/MySQL. The only other 'language' I know is HTML and CSS. What are some good books to use to learn PHP?

Also, what are some good bedtime books? Since the one thing that all successful people share is the fact that they read every day, I figured I'd do the same thing - couldn't hurt...
Click to expand...

Your best bet is to just pick something you want to build, like a blog or todo list app, then just start hacking away at it. PHP is probably the most heavily discussed language ever so you can do anything you want without having to spend a dime...
 
May want to check out Sams teach yourself PHP [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Sams-Teach-Yourself-MySQL-Apache/dp/067232976X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274816719&sr=8-1"]Amazon.com: Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache All in One (4th Edition) (9780672329760): Julie C. Meloni: Books[/ame]
 
I reference O'Reilly's "Learning PHP and MySQL" quite a bit. I haven't taken the time to really learn php but I find it good when I just need to make a little tweak to some code.
 
I learned how to code PHP/MySQL in about 4 days from w3schools.com (prior programming experience of course) ... but the way they lay it out is damn easy to understand and gets you going quick, check them out.
 
dchuk said:
Your best bet is to just pick something you want to build, like a blog or todo list app, then just start hacking away at it. PHP is probably the most heavily discussed language ever so you can do anything you want without having to spend a dime...
Click to expand...

I'd recommend working the problems at ProjectEuler.net if you don't have a specific goal right now or have no idea how to start.

It won't teach you everything, but it will help you learn the basics of a language and think about optimizing your methods.

Just Google the things you want to do:

"php while loop" etc.

It's how I've been learning Ruby.
 
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