| Book by Category | |  | E-Commerce | Home » » » Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL E-Commerce: From Novice to Professional | | | | | | | Description: | | In The Expert's Voice in Open Source series, Apress has harnessed the knowledge and expertise of some of the best folks in open source and this book is no exception. — Mary Norbury-Glaser, Slashdot Contributor (Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL E-Commerce) serves as a fantastic primer for anyone joining the fray in designing and developing online commerce solutions. — Blane Warrene, Open Sourcery Â
helpful in understanding how to achieve these common tasks in building an e-commerce web site. — Jason Gabriele
Beginning PHP 5 E-Commerce: From Novice to Professional is an ideal reference for intermediate PHP 5 and MySQL developers, and programmers familiar with web development technologies. This book covers every step of the design and build process, and provides rich examples that will enable you to build high-quality, extendable e-commerce websites. Take a peek at an actual book example! Furthermore, this book covers site building in three phases. Phase one results in a live website, with an attractive interface and fully searchable product catalog. Next, phase two explains adding facilities to increase sales through cross-selling, upselling, and enhancing customer service. Finally, phase three seeks to reduce costs through automated order processing and integrating with other systems via XML Web services. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Cristian Darie | | Paperback:
| 568 pages | | Publisher:
| Apress | | Publication Date:
| November 22, 2004 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 1590593928 | | Package Length:
| 9.2 inches | | Package Width:
| 7.4 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.4 inches | | Package Weight:
| 2.2 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 26 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
 A comprehensive book with fully working codeJul 13, 2009
I did a couple of pure HTML sites years back, but beyond that I have done no other web apps. I have some background in C and PERL, but this was the first time I have ever touched PHP or SQL.
I worked all the way through this book from front to back, and the end result was a fully working website. There are no bugs in the code in this book. However, that being said, getting my Linux installation fully functional with it was a real chore. But that has nothing to do with the authors and is not the point of the book. Some posters claimed the book has problems. I struggled here and there, but at the end, I always found the problem wasn't with the book. It's user error or various annoying behaviors of PHP, MySQL, or the Apache web server that always end up being the culprit. I did install Zend studio and set it up for remote debugging so I could single step through the code. This was HUGELY helpful. I also configured my web browsers with debug modules so I could see the messages being sent back and forth. While interesting, it's no match for the power of the zend debugger.
After working through the code, I integrated this engine into our existing website. We are not doing ecommerce from that site at the moment, but all the product information, FAQ's, and the news module are now under the content management system developed in this book. I of course had to add new modules for the news and faq management. Products, news items, and FAQ's can easily be changed by anyone capable of managing the web interface. The front page graphics and for that matter pretty much all the graphics on the site except the logo can also be changed through the web interface as well. I had to dig around and learn more PHP here and there. But in general, the book is pretty thorough and can't be expected to teach you advanced PHP as well.
The complexity of the three-tier implementation is a bit daunting at first. I have to admit that. But once you start trying to extend it to meet your sites specific needs, you really begin to see the power of the OOP approach it uses. Other reviewers have mentioned the methodology as well, and I have to strongly agree with them on that. The methodology is first rate. It results in clean, manageable, extensible code that someone can actually figure out and modify. I recently integrated a custom PhPBB3 implementation into our website. I can tell you that code is MUCH harder to understand.
The real hard part with this book is finding the right readers for it. If you are serious about wanting to code a PHP/MySQL site, AND you are actually capable of learning how to do it vs wanting to cookie cutter it, then I highly recommend this book. Of course if you have already made five PHP/MYSQL E-commerce sites, then it's not the book for you. And it's not for a true "novice" either. This is reasonably complicated stuff. The authors have made it about as simple as you can, but you can only make it so simple. The "novice" here means someone with a reasonable programming background that's new to PHP and MySQL.
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 No longer usefulMar 26, 2008
I've been using this book for the past few business weeks. Yes, weeks.
First and foremost, this book is extremely well written, well cited, and clear. Examples are concise, and it rarely leaves you floundering to understand a topic. The ideas are presented in a logical order, proceed clearly, and generally, consist of helpful hints and instructions.
UNFORTUNATELY, all of the code in this book is pretty much worthless. Every bit of it is outdated, and in the 134 pages of the book that I have suffered through, I have had major problems at every step. From having major issues with integrating PEAR (installation has completely changed since the writing of this book, and the major database functions it uses have changed, and the documentation in the book and on the PEAR website are not clear on this), to having to track down irregular and outdated code, not a single feature has been implemented easily or correctly on the first attempt (even ignoring any errors that I made myself due to my inexperience).
I have wasted hours on this book, thinking that it will eventually get to the point where I'm not running into compatibility issues. This may end up being the case, but taking several business days (2.5 weeks invested in just this book) worth of my time to get through 134 pages (mainly spent debugging and perusing forums to find solutions) is just not worth it.
I will be buying the second edition, and I hope that it fixes these issues.
It's really a shame, because the theory in this book is truly awesome. Implementing it, however, is a nightmare, especially for a beginner.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
GreatJun 12, 2007
Although I am having A LOT of trouble implementing all the code, this is the only book I have seen that will actually walk you through all the steps. And the author actually does reply to his emails. I would definitely recomend his second edition of this book.
Update: Get the 2nd Edition.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
Introduction to E-Commerce and the Smarty FrameworkFeb 15, 2007
I've read, and enjoyed, other books by Cristian Darie. This book is no different. This book shows how to use PHP 5 and the Smarty framework to produce an E-Commerce site. The Smarty framework is a good choice for PHP developers seeking to implement a good template. This book fills a gap by being a good introduction to this framework as well.
If you are not familiar with Smarty, the following description is from their web site:
Smarty is a template engine for PHP. More specifically, it facilitates a manageable way to separate application logic and content from its presentation. This is best described in a situation where the application programmer and the template designer play different roles, or in most cases are not the same person.
This book guides you as the author develops an advanced E-Commerce system. Think of something such as Amazon, complete with product reviews, customer and catalog management. Once the user is finished reading the book they are left with working catalog order system that they can modify to suit their needs. Or completely create their own similar system.
The table of contents for the book follows:
Chapter 1: Starting an E-Commerce Site
Chapter 2: Laying Out the Foundations
Chapter 3: Creating the Product Catalog: Part I
Chapter 4: Creating the Product Catalog: Part II
Chapter 5: Searching the Catalog
Chapter 6: Receiving Payments using PayPal
Chapter 7: Catalog Administration
Chapter 8: The Shopping Basket
Chapter 9: Dealing with Customer Orders
Chapter 10: Product Recommendations
Chapter 11: Customer Details
Chapter 12: Implementing the Order Pipline: Part I
Chapter 13: Implementing the Order Pipeline: Part II
Chapter 14: Credit Card Transactions
Chapter 15: Product Reviews
Chapter 16: Connecting to Web Services
5 of 10 found the following review helpful:
MisleadingFeb 04, 2007
I have purchased a multitude of books from Amazon over the years. However, I have never written a book review, no matter how bad the book turned out to be. But, there is always a first time. This is one of the worst - if not the worst - tech books I have ever read, and with over 25 years of Engineering and Software development experience I have read a lot of books.
Now I know why Apress doesn't let you look inside their books on the Amazon website before you purchase. If they did there might not be an Apress at all. First, there is nothing "novice" about this book. Second, you had better know how to use Smarty, and I mean use it well. Don't rely on the Smarty website documentation to help and there are not many definitive books on the subject either. I only found one title devoted to Smarty on Amazon and that would cost another 39.99.
I typically like to review books in the local bookstore and take a gander at Amazon "reviews" before purchase. However, I couldn't find the book locally (which should have told me something) and I failed to pay proper attention to the reviews, i.e., take a look at Michael Brand's review. The editorial book review doesn't even mention Smarty which is a major part of this book.
This book reviews at 4.5 stars. From this, I can only assume the large majority of those reviewing the book work at Apress or are kin to the authors. After the first three chapters I was seeing stars. Don't be suckered in to buying this book unless you are thoroughly familiar with Smarty.
So, if your an experienced -not novice- php/mysql programmer and Smarty wizard, and love to read(and debug) code with little useful explanatory info, then by all means buy this book. Oh, did I mention it makes a great coaster for coffee?
JC.
| | |
|
