I reviewed Eclipse In Action to familiarize myself with the IDE Eclipse. My main focus while reading the book was to learn all I can about developing with Eclipse. I wanted to be able to utilize all the features that Eclipse has to offer, not only in terms of Java developer, but also as a web developer. However, I want to point out that this book is “A Guide for Java Developers”?. So the target audience is for a Java Developer.
The book starts out with a great introduction into Eclipse and the how the IDE comes together in the workbench. Then it moves right into the Java development with Eclipse. It wastes no time getting to the meat of development with Junit, Log4j, testing, debugging, and Ant integration. Not to mention a chapter on CVS integration. The book has everything that a developer needs during the development life cycle of their project. The authors do a great job in adding additional information on the features that Eclipse has to offer to help alleviate the remedial tasks during development. Many of these features can be used outside of Java development.
Part 2 of Eclipse In Action deals with extending Eclipse and creating Eclipse plugins (the foundation of Eclipse). These chapters give a great novice introduction into Eclipse plugin development; however, there seems to be lacking detail into SWT/JFace and advanced plugin development.
Overall Eclipse In Action provides an indepth look into the Eclipse IDE. I would recommend this book to anyone that want to use Eclipse as their IDE. I have been using Eclipse for over a year now and I use it for all languages I develop with, like Java and PHP. Though the book focuses on the Java Developer, this also lends it way into development with other languages.
As an XML developer I spend most of my time working with XML and technologies related to XML. I began reading “Learning XML” with the mindset of finding new and interesting topics. Erik Ray provided some great reading on such topics as Schema, RELAX NG, and Schematron.
I found the first few chapters (1-4) to be a great review, covering basics and key concepts of XML. Mr. Ray does a fantastic job at explaining and providing examples that illustrate basic and complex syntax of XML. He also lets the reader know if there are additional items to discuss later in future chapters. This allowed me to skip forward and review those sections.
Even though I have many years of experience with XML, I never found “Learning XML” dull or boring in the least regard. “Learning XML” continued to provide information that allowed me to read on with interest.
The author also takes the reader into other XML technologies like XPath, XSLT, and XSL-FO. There are many books out there that deal with each of these technologies individually, yet the author provides a strong introduction and foundation to these technologies.
Some of my favorite sections deal with DOM, SAX, pull parsing, DTDs, and Unicode of XML documents.
Even though this book provides tons of satisfying examples, I was really looking forward to at least one chapter on advanced topics or theory. However to my dismay there was not one. Overall, Erik Ray does a great job in presenting, explaining and demonstrating XML and XML technologies to his readers. I encourage anyone that is looking for a great book on XML to check out “Learning XML”.
Learning by examples and solutions of others is a fast way to understanding, and great code. The PHP Cookbook covers many topics, but hits hard on those topics that are so often used in the PHP world. Each chapter contains several solutions. They are presented by describing the problem, listing the example code for the solution, then it details a discussion of this particular solution and how it might be customized for your personal project. It begins with simple, but often used solutions like strings, numbers, dates and times, and arrays. After covering these important peices, it covers the more complicated tasks that many PHP programmers had to fight through the first few times like web automation, XML, encryption, images, and internationalization.
While much of this book will help beginners, it’s focus is on intermediate programmers that might need some well thought out solutions to common problems, as well as good ideas on how to approach a custom solution. I recommend this book to any PHP programmer looking for new ideas, good solutions, or even a simple reminder of some cool stuff PHP can do.
What I liked
The PHP Cookbook had many examples that showed me functions that I haven’t tried, or have forgotten. These include:
The PHP Cookbook also makes a great reference book, because it is well organized, has a detailed table of contents, and a great index. Parts that are critical when you need to find out how to find a specific topic.
What I would like to see improved
Personally, I would like the first half of the book to be a bit lighter. I mentioned that this book seems geared toward intermediate programmers, and we don’t really need a rehash of some really simple topics like strtoupper, ucfirst, exponents, logarithms, explode, in_array, etc. I would like more of this precious paper be used for more topics.
To cut to the chase, I heartily recommend this book. Any serious web server admin should have a copy of this book — I’ve found it indispensable, and refer to it often. They’re not exaggerating when they call it “The Definitive Guide”
Billed as, “Vital information for Apache Programmers and administrators,” this book is definitely geared toward that audience — programmers and admins. That said, the first chapter, “Getting Started,” provides an excellent overview of basic web server concepts that most newbies could understand.
What I liked
I liked almost everything! I found the first half of the book (chapters 1-12) the most useful. These chapters covered just about everything you’d want to know about configuring and running apache. Beyond just the basics, the book covers in depth: virtual hosts, authentication, content description and modification, indexing, redirection, proxying, logging, security, and running a big web site. I came away with a much higher level of respect for Apache’s capabilities — I was really surprised how much I didn’t know about Apache, and how much this book could tell me.
Additionally, there was a very interesting section on writing modules for Apache which, though a little beyond my expertise, gave me a better understanding of Apache’s inner workings.
Disappointments
My biggest disappointment with the book was that it dealt so little with PHP, which only got 6 pages. I would have been less disappointed if they hadn’t 50-plus pages to CGI/Perl and 17 pages to Java. Additionally, their XML section dealt almost entirely with Perl and Java, ignoring PHP. Granted, this isn’t a PHP-specific book, but (considering I got the book via a PHP user group) I hoped for equal coverage.
From apprentice to master, anyone involved with PHP will find this book insightful and instructional.Both Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans contribute to the book and provide witty and campy rhetoric throughout. The latest edition does well in covering changes and enhancements specific to PHP5 — including a thorough discussion of OO programming. Highly recommended.
I have been programming PHP for several years and I was anxious to learn about some of the new features offered in PHP5. Core PHP Programming 3rd Edition has been fully revised to include PHP5 specific features andfunctions.
The opening chapter provides a high-level overview of PHP including a discussion about why PHP is better than it’s competition. For someone just starting with PHP this provides a great introduction to the language and the philosophy behind the software.
Chapters 2-5 cover basic language constructs from variables to control statements to arrays and functions. Even a seasoned PHP programmer will want to read these chapters to familiarize themselves with PHP5 specific changes and features. I even found a few hidden gems in the early chapters relating to embedded variables, HERE documents and PHP datatype casting. I know you’ll be tempted to skip ahead - but take the time to readthe opening chapters.
The real meat begins in chapter 6 where we are introduced to PHP’s new OO model. This chapter can easily overwhelm you, especially if you are new to OO programming. Take time to read and re-read everything that is covered in this chapter. Even if you have OO experience (say with Java), you will still want to pay attention to the sometimes peculiar way PHP does things. If you are interested in developing an OO project using PHP, you will definitely want to spend a lot of time in this chapter. Make sure you read and understand the code samples before moving on.
The next section is basically a language and function reference that is not much different from the online documentation. There are some nice code examples that make it worth your time to read, or at least skim, through the entire section.
One thing about Core PHP Programming that separates it from any other PHP book I have read,is the fact that in includes nearly 200 pages devoted to high-level programming techniques and methodologies. With sections like: Algorithms, Software Engineering and Design Patterns, the reader is sure to gain additional understanding that will make him/her a better programmer. The latter sections are highly appropriate even for those who may not be involved in day-to-day coding. Discussions about writing design documents, application frameworks and change management should be read by any manager or executive who is involved in the development or management of PHP applications.
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