I’ll demonstrate a simple example on how to connect to MySQL using PHP’s PDO class. Just some of the benefits of PDO is that it’s fast and if you use the PDO::prepare() method it will prevent SQL injection attacks by calling the PDO::quote() method. The other pros is that there are several databases it will support. So let’s dive right into the code:

Fatal Error new PDO Instance

Just an important note that if you receive the following type of fatal error in your development environment:

Looks pretty messy and hard to decipher. When trying to decipher error code I usually look at the first error which led me to see why it was reporting an “Unknown database” when it was existing. The extra quotes also gave me a hint as to the problem. So I concluded the problem resulted in the placement of extra quotes around the values of host and/or dbname. The following will generate the previous error:

So if you do not use variables then do not add the single quotes for the values of host and dbname. In other words, use the following code instead:

This is a simple test to connect to your mysql database or any other support database. Just for your information if you wish to connect to PostgreSQL which is another popular and robust database use the following code in place of the line of instantiation:

If you’re in a development environment and wish to display your errors directly to the screen you can specify the errors displayed. You need to set your display_errors settings to ‘on’ in your php.ini file. So set your error attributes after instantiating the PDO class like so:

There are three types of error report settings for PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE:
PDO::ERRMODE_SILENT = error codes
PDO::ERRMODE_WARNING = E_WARNING
PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION = Throw exceptions

Here’s an example of implementing PDO::ATR_ERRMODE:

Don’t confuse this with the errors generated from the php setting of error_reporting. The errors from PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE apply to the sql query and its results. I’ll dive into the error settings and the different outputs of the php.ini error_reporting settings and PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE report settings in a future article.

The market is full of developers in different languages like ASP.net, C#, VB.net, Coldfusion, Java and last but not least PHP. Among all the great time has come for PHP developers in India and abroad. The reason is simple. They are highly in demand due to domestic and international requirement. Let me explain how.

Due to the recent recession, most of companies and government organizations have started cutting corners, IT expenditure is among the worst sufferer out of any other expenditures. Because IT expenditure is not considered as Core source of Direct Income, so it’s going to feel the heat. Now need of having up to date online information without losing the customer faith is also important. Its true for government and private organization. But that cost goes higher and higher in licensing and development. The response to that was simple, open source technology adoption. And what is the easiest and best to start is PHP development.

PHP development is not only providing the cost effective solution but its known for its robust features on internet. Above all the great community support has made it un disputed leader in web development solutions. It’s definitely giving a second thought to existing proprietary programming language owners.  

The other reason for PHP popularity is the simplicity and structure that is based on OOP. The programmers are taught OPP during their academics, so migrating to PHP from any other language becomes easier than ever. That adds to its rapid expansion among the developers in India and abroad.

The role of India has become vital here, worldwide India is the leading provider of developers, and that gives an edge to India for Open source revolution also. Most famous PHP based open sources like Joomla, Drupal, Oscommerce have their India based community chapters.

Advice to ASP.net Developers and coldfusion developers, don’t neglect PHP now, it could surely save your job in future.

That said, I found this book to be very helpful. The sections on installing and configuring Apache, PHP and MySQL certainly saved me many hours of reading the online documentation and tweaking of settings while setting up my local test bed. That, in itself, made me a very happy camper. The author goes on to cover the various aspects from the basics of the PHP language and class libraries to topics like Authentication, Security, Session Handlers and eMail functionality that help anyone new to PHP setup some fairly sophisticated site capabilities.

The second edition has been supplemented with an added 200 pages, including a new section on PEAR (PHP Extension and Application Repository). This is a wealth of prewritten classes and packages that can be used to add even more sophisticated functionality to the novice’s web development toolbox. The author demonstrates several of the more prominent packages.

The second edition has greatly beefed up with additional coverage of MySQL 5, including chapters on stored procedures, triggers and the PHP mysqli extension (all missed in the first edition). Most of the examples offered are clean and general enough to be useful templates for the reader’s tailoring.

My suggestion for novices to PHP is read through chapter 9, then skip to the various sections that solve specific problems being faced or are of particular interest, including installing and configuring your local test bed.

Bottom line, the first edition was a good book for intermediate to veteran programmers looking for a quick tutorial on PHP (circa version 5.0); the second edition is even better. Novice programmers should ensure that they have a full understanding of the basics of programming (and OOP) before attempting it. I would now use this book to teach a class on PHP.

I reach for this book when I want to get up to speed on something about PHP 5 quickly. With it, I can start coding and seeing results right away. The book covers a range of topics, the practicality of which can be best appreciated when you are faced with a real life project. For example, pp. 660-665 in Chapter 27, “Practical Database Queries”, covers creating paged output (that is, spreading query results across several web pages) and listing page numbers which was just the thing I wanted to learn last night. My wife’s database needs that sort of output. You can download Gilmore’s example code and quickly start using it and then applying the lessons learned to build your own code.

This book is geared to people who want to get their hands on real code, wring the juice from it, make mistakes with it, learn all they can from it, and then tap out fresh code that does the same things with a little more oomph. Such people do not like long, dreary tracts of reading before being able participate in the elusive action. It is a good learning format because the only useful way to learn programming is to dive right in and do it. The book is a blend of brief discussion and quick code snippets with the expected results shown right away. This is a very good way to learn programming.

The section on SOAP, starting on page 450, makes me realize I had better experiment with this interesting technology. I’d certainly like to be able to find the temperature for a given postal code — and other things of greater interest. Chapters 12, “PHP Authentication”, 14, “Networking With PHP”, and 15, “PHP and LDAP”, look into core internet services that every programmer should know how to exploit, but too often don’t. For example I’ve learned how to authenticate a user with LDAP.

The author, W. Jason Gilmore, is cheerful and most helpful in his responses to reader inquiries. He responded quickly to my questions and I am impressed with his ability to courteously point me in the right direction.

Be sure to download Gilmore’s example code. There are 30 chapters worth of programming stuffed into that zip file.

The book has a few rough edges. The most obvious is that some sentences are a little wordy. That’s all right, you can move on to the next paragraphs, and will soon be trying out a new example. I wish Jason had discussed MySQL 4.1 and the mysqli interface, especially since there are other books around that cover MySQL 4.0.x. Perhaps if he had added another chapter to cover that? We can always look forward to a second edition.

This book should be near every serious programmer’s desk. You, dear reader, will reach for it a surprising amount of the time.

This book was written for new programmers that want a programming introduction to PHP and was not written for web programmers new to PHP. Although I program, I want features of a web programming book when I buy a web programming book.

What I consider a feature of a (good) web programming book: Chapters are split into a quick intro to the most commonly used fuctions of the chapter’s topic (5-10 pages) and a longer part for use as a reference (15-20 pages). The book’s format has good eye catching sections so readers do not waste time finding what is important if we just want to skim things so we can get into doing some web programming quickly. Commonly used functions are not buried in a bunch of uncommonly used functions.