Programming PHP by Rasmus Lerdorf and Kevin Tatroe
Published by O'Reilly.
With one of the authors, Rasmus Lerdorf, being the creator of PHP you know you are in for a good book and "Programming PHP" certainly doesn't disappoint. This book will take you from the ground floor to developing your own web applications. As with most books, it begins simple and progresses to more advanced topics.
When reading the book cover to cover, you are taught in a logical manner. The concepts of functions and arrays are taught before databases for example. Many books out there today jump ahead too quickly before the foundations are in place. This book does not. While teaching the foundations, Rasmus and Kevin show great programming style. As the preface mentions, their goal is not that you just become a PHP programmer, but a good PHP programmer.
Beyond the basic foundations presented in this book, it also covers topics such as creating images with GD, using the PDF features of PHP, and XML. For those that really want to get knee deep into PHP, they also have a chapter devoted to extending PHP by creating your own extensions. They walk you through creating a simple rot13 extension, then show you what you need to know in order to create more complicated extensions. There is also a chapter devoted to programming in PHP securely. This addresses issues that every PHP programmer, new and seasoned alike, need to pay attention to.
If you are looking for a book to break into the world of PHP, this one should be among the top of the list.
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