Some time ago, Packt publishing sent me this book to review. Here it is, being somewhat overdue!

He talks about the book's contents - the different chapters detailing the different services' APIs, the protocols that are used to talk to those services and the data formats your scripts would have to be able to talk in to communicate. He recommends the book to those looking to get started with mashups specifically, but warns that in some places the book tends to "reinvent the wheel" rather than using classes/packages that already exist.

Kshipra Singh of Packt Publishing was kind enough to send me a copy of Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11 For Effective MySQL Management to review. The author is Marc Delisle, phpMyAdmin developer and one of the project administrators since 2001. You probably can't get a better author for that kind of book.

Stefan talks about a few of the chapters - the introductory material, one on exporting database structure and data, a look at the relational system and a look at bookmarks (a way of storing statements for later use). He does recommend the book, though, noting that it's crammed with enough information to make it worth the price.

Written by Stefan Priebsch, this is the only book you will need to help you through the rough spots when migrating your PHP apps from PHP4 to PHP5. Not only is this an extremely comprehensive and in-depth resource, it will show you virtually every pitfall you may encounter and will undoubtedly make your migration as smooth as possible.

The book covers things like the concepts surrounding migration, some strategies to follow and an outline of a recommended migration process (as well as some tools to help). You can find out more about this new book on its page on the php|architect website and order your own copy - $33 CAD for the print and PDF versions together and just $29 CAD for the PDF only.

Putting the aspects of Hayder's grasp of the English language aside, the book is rather good as an introduction to the various technologies that it covers.

He points out a few things of note - the beginner OOP chapters (only made for the newbies out there), the contents of the main OOP chapter and the good section on PHPUnit and unit testing. He also has a few suggestions of things that could make the book a bit better, including a personal suggestion on code formating and braces.

This book is a tutorial guide to Joomla! 1.5. It was written and published during the development of Joomla! 1.5. It is intended for Web developers, designers, Web masters, content editors and marketing professionals. It is suitable for anyone starting out with Joomla! 1.5, for people who upgrade to Joomla! 1.5, and for those who just want have a good printed manual at hand.

R.L. (the reviewer) goes through some of the chapters, detailing their content including some of the software mentioned in them (like Fireboard and DOCman). He recommends the book to anyone looking for a good in-hand Joomla! resource but notes that a chapter on security would have been a nice addition.

So today you get a double bonus. You get to check out Pro PHP, Patterns, Frameworks, Testing and more by Kevin McArthur. You also get a great tutorial on SPL!

The sample chapter looks (obviously) at the SPL, the Standard PHP Library - functions included with PHP5 releases to accomplish some pretty cool things.

I started reading "CodeIgniter for Rapid PHP Application Development" as a novice. This book is specially targeted to anybody like me: little or no prior experience of Object Oriented Programming or the MVC approach, with couple of years procedural PHP experience, and is after something that can really take you to the next level.

The reviewer (Ryan Partington) talks about what the CodeIgniter framework is, his struggle with the MVC concept, how the book is divided up and the benchmarking of framework applications.

Overrall I would have to say that PHP Oracle Web Development is a good book for a PHP developer needing to get up to speed quickly working with an Oracle database. [...] The only place I found the book lacking was the initial setup of the environment.

The environment they chose to go with was a Windows setup which caused him problem when he tried to compile with the oci8 extensions - libraries weren't found where they were needed. His solution? Setting his ORACLE_HOME to the right location then all was well.

In Learning PHP Data Objects, the author, Dennis Popel, examines this new system and explains how to begin using PDO in development as a replacement for typical database drivers. The book is an excellent introduction to the data abstraction layer. It also provides essential insight into the inner workings of database interaction with PHP.

The review talks about the contents of the book, what PDO is/how it's used and how well the book hits the mark for its target audience.

Today we are going to do something a little different. I've got books stacking up here that need reviewing, so I'm going to start interjecting book reviews into the podcast stream. [...] This week's book is "PHP in Action" by Manning Publications.

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