Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL E-Commerce: From Novice to Professional

by Cristian Darie and Mihai Bucica

Book Overview

"Beginning PHP 5 E-Commerce: From Novice to Professional "is an ideal reference for intermediate PHP 5 and MySQL developers, and programmers familiar with web development technologies. This book... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590593928
• ISBN13: 9781590593929
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Apress
• Length: 537 Pages
• Weight: 2.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 7.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Quality book for getting the job done.

Having read all of the reviews about this book, I must interject as based on some of the more negative responses. The principal behind this book isn't on teaching you PHP by little examples here and there, and then an assimilation of little projects. It's a book designed on making a fully function eCommerce web application for usage on a small to medium professional level. The methodologies of this book are a 100% PHP5. Pure object oriented scripting, involving a new standard for database connection via the PEAR DB class, and utilizing the SMARTY template engine. I see there's some negative response in using the SMARTY template engine, as it's deemed "unnecessary" or even a means to hype this open source product. What people must understand is that one of the contributors to this book is not only well versed in advanced PHP development, he's also an ASP.net developer. Because ASP.net is the "enemy" of PHP, there's obviously little or no amount of understanding how that language works in comparison to PHP. PHP is a pure scripting language, even if it has means to develop objects and classes. It's a very loose, loose "nuts and bolts" language. And it has no inherent structure. You make up the rules. So, there's a tendency for not only sloppy spaghetti code, but also sloppy methodology. Data queries can sit in the same exact page as to where the front end HTML sits. And this can be some very ugly code if you need to get back to it in a few months. Also, if you need to expand or put more advanced features in your site, it'd be almost as an enormous task as just rebuilding it from scratch trying to decipher what you have done with out a structure. Hence a need to separate out the data, the filtering, and the presentation level. In ASP.net, being a newly developed OO language, the main principal in designing on the front end is called "Code behind" or, in 2.0 "code beside". What this entails is that when you open up a brand new .aspx (the file extension of a ASP.net page), you're not getting just one flat text file. You're getting a file that refers to various other files that sit "behind" the one that you're about to work on. When you script out your page utilizing the .net classes, it then automates a whole lot of behind the scenes scripting in VB/C# and even Javascipt. In the end, you get these advanced features that you would have had to spend many more hours developing in other methods and server languages. So, it's quite obvious they are taking a .net philosophy and placing it in a PHP word. What I learned the most from this book isn't so much coding, but rather...metholodly. It's utilizing a three tier levels of development: a data layer, a business (filtering) layer, and a presentation layer. This is standard practice in the world out side of PHP. I see that there are more advanced programmers than I that claim this isn't "professional code" All I can say to that is: This book isn't created for an enterprise level project.

Turnkey E-Commerce Website

I am a newbie when it comes to Website programming (although I am familiar with SQL theory and programming logic from programming in Delphi). I have worked the last eight weeks on a website from scratch (using this code from the book as the basis). Through trial and error (and internet searches), I am only now beginning to understand the whole PHP/MySQL concept. Nonetheless, we will be going LIVE this following Tuesday with a living, breathing, dynamic (as opposed to static), fully functional, secure website. It's hard to believe. We will have 128 bit SSL Security and Trust Certificate (thru Comodo purchased through our website host) with a live payment pipeline (purchased through Verisign). This means that we will be able to authorize and collect (after inventory is confirmed) MC/Visa payments in real time (seconds), with instant email confirmation of Order Received and Order Shipped. There is NO WAY I could've done this on my own... especially in 8 weeks. I know 8 weeks seems like a long time, but in terms of a fully functional, SECURE website, it really isn't. I have 'tweaked' the website a great deal to fit our look and requirements, but the basic MySQL database and logic are unchanged. I may have added another field here or there, and that is about it. A couple of precautions though... you MUST have it hosted on a webhosting site that has PHP5 (save the frustration). You MUST have the webhosting company install the Pear Mail for your 'libs' folder on your server. And your webhosting company will have to recompile php5 on their server with pfpro (verisign's payment gateway file library). That's it... If I would've known this to start with, it would've gone quicker than 8 weeks. I don't know if it's OK to put in a plug for the webhosting company I am using (I am not a part of the company), but Nexcess.net out of Michigan has been terrific to work with. I probably wouldn't have been able to find out all of the above paragraph without their help. They never complained... they only worked with me to get the job done. Probably other webhosting sites will do that also. I'm just pleased with them. A last addition to the above review... we no longer use Verisign as our payment processor. We now use Authorize.net. That took a little time to set up (a few days). But after an internet search for the Authorize.net file (search using terms like "authorize.net" "x_customer_ip" "x_country" "x_first_name"), I just copied and pasted that file into my Collect Funds file (in the Commerce Library), set up the links from MySQL, and everything worked great! The book is set up for Verisign, but we were able to convert to Authorize.net this way. There are only about 4 payment 'pipeline' providers in the US, with Verisign and Authorize.net being two of the four (the others are mostly proprietary). Hope this helps!

THE BOOK the industry doesn't want you to have! Darie Rocks!

I have bought numerous programming books in the past and have always wanted a thorough book that covers detailed development of an e-Commerce website. I've bought several that claim to be indepth in this area but they have all fallen short of being what I was looking for. I've never bought a book without reading the reviews on it first....but this book was so new when I bought it that there were no reviews available for it. It sounded like it contained what I was looking for so I took a chance and bought it. I'm really glad I took that chance! "Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL E-Commerce: From Novice to Professional" is THE ABSOLUTE BEST BOOK available that details, step-by-step, how to build a full-fledge e-Commerce website...and believe me, I have bought every PHP/MySQL book (plus many more) that can't hold up to their claims....but this book delivers what the others can't. This is truly a ONE OF A KIND book. Firstly, this books covers the ins and outs of installing PHP, PEAR, MySQL, and Apache on your Unix based machine (installations for Windows systems are also covered). Secondly, the book shows you detailed code that performs different functions and then explains step-by-step what each bit of the code is doing. Plus, this is THE ONLY book that will show you how to do database queries that return images from a product catalog and lay out the images with a description and link to a product page. The other PHP / MySQL books only go as far as showing you how to build a page header and footer with text only query results. Also, the book helps you set up your site for future expansion. It uses Smarty Templating for page layouts so that your site is easy to modify and maintain and Darie shows you how to use PEAR DB abstraction to allow for changes in the type of database you might decide to use in the future (ex. , migrating from MySQL to Oracle). That being said, the title of the book is a little misleading in the fact that MySQL is used very little in this book. The book uses PEAR to perform the MySQL functionality. I have bought books in the past that end up being written hastily with poor writing style and code errors galore. Cristian Darie and Mr. Bucica have taken the time to write a near perfect book. If you don't believe me look at the erata for this book at Apress.com....there are almost no coding errors at all. And, their writing style really makes the book fun to read. Lastly, and definitely worth mentioning, I ran into a PHP problem that I couldn't solve. Cristian Darie listed his website and e-mail address in the front of this book and I thought I'd try e-mailing him to help me. I didn't expect to receive a reply, especially since having e-mailed other authors in the past with no reply. Within three hours Cristian Darie had replied to my e-mail with the solution to my problem. He was very nice and polite and even offered his help if I ran into future problems as I was working through the book! This is absolutely amazing and UNPARAL

Everything you need to know to build an E-commerce site

The use of PHP 5 and MySQL for e-commerce is a tested and proven combination. This book is primarily intended for the reader who already has some PHP knowledge and needs to understand how to build an e-commerce site. It does not focus on teaching either PHP 5 or MySQL but instead focuses on how to use the combination to produce an exceptional e-commerce solution. The authors use the example of a Tshirt shop and walk the reader through every step of completely constructing a viable e-commerce site. The book covers everything from designing your site, to creating a product catalog, searching the catalog, receiving payments, catalog administration, creating a shopping basket, working with customer orders, product recommendations, storing customer information, secure connections, implementing the order pipeline, working with credit cards, and setting up product reviews. The appendixes include detailed information on installing Apache, PHP, MySQL, and phpAdmin (for both Windows and Unix-like systems), hosting your web site, and project management. While this is not a book about learning the PHP scripting language it does contain enough detailed code to create a functioning e-commerce site even if you don't understand how the code works. For example, on page 192 it says to "Create a new template file named admin_login.tpl in the templates folder and add the following code to it:..." This is followed by a long code listing that produces the desired results. There is a short explanation of the function of various sections of the code but nothing that details the purpose of each command, variable, etc. This is really not a problem since they state up front that the target audience is a PHP programmer who needs to learn how to build an e-commerce site, but it does deserve mention for those who have no knowledge of PHP and are considering the book. The first thing a person might notice when thinking about purchasing this book is that there is no CD in the back containing all the many examples of source code. This could be very discouraging as the examples are extensive and rewriting them by hand without error can be a daunting task. However, Apress does make all of the examples available for download at their web site. Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL E-Commerce is highly recommended for anyone who has some basic knowledge of PHP and MySQL and wants to capitalize on this to build a powerful e-commerce site.