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PHP MySQL Website Programming: Problem - Design - Solution
The aim of this text is to define a good methodology for creating a web site (with functionality that is used on many different kinds of sites, and that programmers may well be working on in the future) by identifying problems, surmising solutions to those problems, and then implementing those solutions using modern development practices.
538 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2003
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January 15, 2010
Chris Lea et al., PHP MySQL Website Programming: Problem – Design – Solution (Apress, 2002)
I've been bulking up on PHP/MySQL books recently as I transition my household machines to Linux and prepare to implement a webserver to hold my book database and the painfully simple font-end I've designed to work with it. The more I read, the more convinced I am that PHP isn't exactly what I need (though since that's an issue of preference, I won't be addressing it in this review), but MySQL has always seemed the way to go for Linux databases, and so I'm still devouring these things. I have yet to come across one that really gets into intricate databases on the web (the book database is currently thirty tables without factoring in logins, permissions, and the like), but this is the most complex of the lot so far. Unfortunately, it sticks with MyISAM, and indicates that's the usual convention when dealing with webhosts. This does answer a few questions I've had for years about why website updates sometimes seem inconsistent, anyway (MyISAM, at least at the time this book was written, didn't support foreign keys, leaving the programmers to make sure relations were enforced in code; the possible problems should be obvious). Still, this book covered a lot of ground I haven't come across in other PHP/MySQL web design books before, and that was easily worth the price of admission.
Lea and his cohorts take the reader through the construction of a complete website, with a number of features one would expect to see (discussion fora, polls, basic ecommerce, etc.). As a side note, the website used as an example in the book is still out there on the web as of this writing, though I did get a number of unspecified database errors while wandering through it (and it hasn't been updated in a long, long time). In any case, the layout of the book, and much of the code used in it, is simple and straightforward. While that makes a great deal of sense from a teaching standpoint, it does tend to exacerbate some of the inherent problems with using MyISAM as a database scheme for web development, and the authors seem to dismiss some of those problems (such as the lack of foreign keys I mentioned; yes, it's certainly good programming practice for the programmers to check for errors before the data gets passed, but having another layer of built-in error checking isn't ever extraneous) rather than discussing them rationally. More importantly, however, the book discusses building a home-rolled content management system. With the recent rise (and explosion in popularity) of out-of-the-box CMSes like Joomla! and Drupal, this might seem like overkill, but let's face it: how many people out there building websites are actually going to need even 20% of the features you find in a CMS written for the purpose of trying to please everyone all the time? Lea et al. offer a much lighter-weight option that even the novice web-building geek can easily extend and customize.
All in all, a lot here of worth. I actually picked this one up at the store instead of getting it out of the library, and while I'm not sure how much of the actual code I'm going to use, some of the design concepts made it worth the price of admission by themselves; everything else is icing on the cake. *** ½
I've been bulking up on PHP/MySQL books recently as I transition my household machines to Linux and prepare to implement a webserver to hold my book database and the painfully simple font-end I've designed to work with it. The more I read, the more convinced I am that PHP isn't exactly what I need (though since that's an issue of preference, I won't be addressing it in this review), but MySQL has always seemed the way to go for Linux databases, and so I'm still devouring these things. I have yet to come across one that really gets into intricate databases on the web (the book database is currently thirty tables without factoring in logins, permissions, and the like), but this is the most complex of the lot so far. Unfortunately, it sticks with MyISAM, and indicates that's the usual convention when dealing with webhosts. This does answer a few questions I've had for years about why website updates sometimes seem inconsistent, anyway (MyISAM, at least at the time this book was written, didn't support foreign keys, leaving the programmers to make sure relations were enforced in code; the possible problems should be obvious). Still, this book covered a lot of ground I haven't come across in other PHP/MySQL web design books before, and that was easily worth the price of admission.
Lea and his cohorts take the reader through the construction of a complete website, with a number of features one would expect to see (discussion fora, polls, basic ecommerce, etc.). As a side note, the website used as an example in the book is still out there on the web as of this writing, though I did get a number of unspecified database errors while wandering through it (and it hasn't been updated in a long, long time). In any case, the layout of the book, and much of the code used in it, is simple and straightforward. While that makes a great deal of sense from a teaching standpoint, it does tend to exacerbate some of the inherent problems with using MyISAM as a database scheme for web development, and the authors seem to dismiss some of those problems (such as the lack of foreign keys I mentioned; yes, it's certainly good programming practice for the programmers to check for errors before the data gets passed, but having another layer of built-in error checking isn't ever extraneous) rather than discussing them rationally. More importantly, however, the book discusses building a home-rolled content management system. With the recent rise (and explosion in popularity) of out-of-the-box CMSes like Joomla! and Drupal, this might seem like overkill, but let's face it: how many people out there building websites are actually going to need even 20% of the features you find in a CMS written for the purpose of trying to please everyone all the time? Lea et al. offer a much lighter-weight option that even the novice web-building geek can easily extend and customize.
All in all, a lot here of worth. I actually picked this one up at the store instead of getting it out of the library, and while I'm not sure how much of the actual code I'm going to use, some of the design concepts made it worth the price of admission by themselves; everything else is icing on the cake. *** ½
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