What s Unusual About This Book?

What's Unusual About This Book?

This booklike other books in the Spring Into… Seriesincludes the following elements:

• Each topic is explained in a discrete one- or two-page unit called a " chunk ."

• Each chunk builds on the previous chunks in that chapter.

• Most chunks contain one or more examples. I believe that good examples provide the foundation for almost all useful technical documents.

• Many chunks contain sidebars that provide helpful, ancillary material.

In addition, this book is filled with examplesdozens of thembecause seeing a working example is the best way to learn this material. Here are just a few included topics:

• Reading data from a web page's text fields, radio buttons , check boxes, and list boxes on the server

• Creating and handling image maps

• Tracking users with sessions and cookies

• Writing data to files on the server (such as guest books)

• Recovering from errors without crashing

• Connecting to databases on the server

• Using SQL to work with databases

• Drawing images on-the-fly and sending them back to the browser

• Handling strings and arrays

• Working with the PHP operators

• Creating functions

• Creating classes and objects

• Using FTP from PHP

• Sending email from PHP

• Using sessions to preserve data between page accesses

• The complete PHP syntax

There's a lot to PHP, and there's a lot to this book. Our plan is to cram as much PHP into the book as we can.

Where Can You Download Examples Used in This Book?

The code in this book is available for download at http://www.awprofessional.com/springinto. All the code examples have been tested by the author and tech editor on different machines.

This book is designed to be at the top of the PHP field. If you have comments and suggestions for improvements, please write to me, care of Prentice Hall. This book is designed to be the new standard in PHP programming books, more complete and more accessible than ever before. Please keep in touch with ways to improve it and keep it on the cutting edge. Thanks.

Who Helped Me Write This Book?

A book like this is the work of many people. Besides your local author, Mark L. Taub and Barry Rosenberg helped create and design the book. Matt Wade and Eugenia Harris did excellent reviews of the manuscript.

That's it. We're ready to dig into PHP on Chapter 1.

About the Author

Steven Holzner has been writing about online programming since before the Internet became the Internet. He's worked extensively with PHP and many other online languages and is the author of 88 programming books. His books have included many bestsellers , have sold over two million copies worldwide, and have been translated into 18 languages. He's also been a contributing editor for PC Magazine . Online programming topics, such as PHP, Perl, JavaServer Pages, servlets, and others, are his specialty.

About the Series Editor

Barry Rosenberg wrote KornShell Programming Tutorial (Addison-Wesley, 1991), which pioneered many of the chunk -oriented techniques found in the Spring Into… Series. He is the author of more than sixty corporate technical manuals, primarily on programming. An experienced instructor, Barry has taught everything from high-school physics to weeklong corporate seminars on data structures.

Most recently, he spent four semesters at MIT where he taught advanced technical writing. Barry is also a professional juggler who has performed more than 1,200 shows, including a three-week run in Japan. Juggling serves as the backdrop for his novel , Cascade (not yet published). Barry currently works as the documentation manager at 170 Systems.