Instead of starting at "Hello World," Wicked Cool PHP assumes that you're familiar with the language and jumps right into the good stuff. After you learn the FAQs of life-the most commonly wished for PHP scripts-you'll work your way through smart configuration options and the art of forms, all the way through to complex database-backed scripts.
Wicked Cool PHP contains a wide variety of scripts to process credit cards, check the validity of email addresses, template HTML, and serve dynamic images and text. The 76 easily implemented scripts will also teach you how to:
Send and receive email notifications
Track your visitors' behavior with cookies and sessions
Override PHP's default settings
Manipulate dates, images, and text on the fly
Harness SOAP and other web services
Create an online poll, ecard delivery system, and blog
But it's not all fun and games: Security is a big concern when programming any web application. So you'll learn how to encrypt your confidential data, safeguard your passwords, and prevent common cross-site-scripting attacks. And you'll learn how to customize all of the scripts to fit your own needs.
Dynamic Web content doesn't have to be difficult. Learn the secrets of the craft from two experienced PHP developers with Wicked Cool PHP.
Chapter 1 THE FAQS OF LIFE—THE SCRIPTS EVERY PHP PROGRAMMER WANTS (OR NEEDS) TO KNOW
#1: Including Another File as a Part of Your Script
#2: Highlighting Alternate Row Colors in a Table
#3: Creating Previous/Next Links
#4: Printing the Contents of an Array
#5: Turning an Array into a Nonarray Variable That Can Be Restored Later
#6: Sorting Multidimensional Arrays
#7: Templating Your Site with Smarty
Chapter 2 CONFIGURING PHP
Configuration Settings and the php.ini File
#8: Revealing All of PHP's Settings
#9: Reading an Individual Setting
#10: Error Reporting
#11: Suppressing All Error Messages
#12: Extending the Run Time of a Script
#13: Preventing Users from Uploading Large Files
#14: Turning Off Registered Global Variables
#15: Enabling Magic Quotes
#16: Restricting the Files that PHP Can Access
#17: Shutting Down Specific Functions
#18: Adding Extensions to PHP
Chapter 3 PHP SECURITY
Recommended Security Configuration Options
#19: SQL Injection Attacks
#20: Preventing Basic XSS Attacks
#21: Using SafeHTML
#22: Protecting Data with a One-Way Hash
#23: Encrypting Data with Mcrypt
#24: Generating Random Passwords
Chapter 4 WORKING WITH FORMS
Security Measures: Forms Are Not Trustworthy
Verification Strategies
Using $_POST, $_GET, $_REQUEST, and $_FILES to Access Form Data
#25: Fetching Form Variables Consistently and Safely
#26: Trimming Excess Whitespace
#27: Importing Form Variables into an Array
#28: Making Sure a Response Is One of a Set of Given Values
#29: Using Multiple Submit Buttons
#30: Validating a Credit Card
#31: Double-Checking a Credit Card's Expiration Date
#32: Checking Valid Email Addresses
#33: Checking American Phone Numbers
Chapter 5 WORKING WITH TEXT AND HTML
#34: Extracting Part of a String
#35: Making a String Uppercase, Lowercase, or Capitalized
#36: Finding Substrings
#37: Replacing Substrings
#38: Finding and Fixing Misspelled Words with pspell
#39: Regular Expressions
#40: Rearranging a Table
#41: Creating a Screen Scraper
#42: Converting Plaintext into HTML-Ready Markup
#43: Automatically Hyperlinking URLs
#44: Stripping HTML Tags from Strings
Chapter 6 WORKING WITH DATES
How Unix Time Works
#45: Getting the Current Timestamp
#46: Getting the Timestamp of a Date in the Past or Future
#47: Formatting Dates and Times
#48: Calculating the Day of the Week from a Given Date
#49: Finding the Difference Between Two Dates
MySQL Date Formats
Chapter 7 WORKING WITH FILES
File Permissions
#50: Placing a File's Contents into a Variable
#51: Creating and Writing to a File
#52: Checking to See If a File Exists
#53: Deleting Files
#54: Uploading Images to a Directory
#55: Reading a Comma-Separated File
Chapter 8 USER AND SESSION TRACKING
Using Cookies and Sessions to Track User Data
#56: Creating a "Welcome Back, Username!" Message with Cookies
#57: Using Sessions to Temporarily Store Data
#58: Checking to See If a User's Browser Accepts Cookies
#59: Redirecting Users to Different Pages
#60: Forcing a User to Use SSL-Encrypted Pages
#61: Extracting Client Information
#62: Session Timeouts
#63: A Simple Login System
Chapter 9 WORKING WITH EMAIL
#64: Using PHPMailer to Send Mail
#65: Using Email to Verify User Accounts
Chapter 10 WORKING WITH IMAGES
#66: Creating a CAPTCHA (Security) Image
#67: Creating Thumbnail Images
Chapter 11 USING cURL TO INTERACT WITH WEB SERVICES
#68: Connecting to Other Websites
#69: Using Cookies
#70: Transforming XML into a Usable Form
#71: Using Mapping Web Services
#72: Using PHP and SOAP to Request Data from Amazon.com
William Steinmetz is the author of LAN Party: Hosting the Ultimate Frag Fest (Wiley) and co-author of Paint Shop Pro for Dummies (IDG). He is the webmaster and editor of StarCityGames.com, where traffic has quadrupled as a result of the changes he designed and implemented, all using PHP.
I like to recommend this book to new and enthusiastic PHP coders
By Chetankumar Akarte
from Undisclosed
Comments about oreilly Wicked Cool PHP:
PHP is a widely used server side scripting language used for producing dynamic web pages. In the PHP development lifecycle everyone face some common problem and considering this No Starch Press come with a good book "Wicked Cool PHP: Real-World Scripts That Solve Difficult Problems" written by William Steinmetz with Brian Ward.
Wicked Cool PHP is a wide-ranging collection of complete PHP scripts that solve specific problems frequently encountered by PHP coders. Book contains 12 chapters covering 76 frequently encountered problems.
Conclusion:
PHP is popular web development language. Also Lots of Tips n tracks, FAQ's and tutorials available freely on web. But they are scattered and very difficult to choose a right solution among them. While during development stage, time is an important factor and this book is a handy solution on the problems commonly faced by every programmer during there PHP development experience.
I like to recommend this book to new and enthusiastic PHP coders
