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This book is an essential guide to some of the best free add-ons to PHP. These add-ons, or tools, provide invaluable functionality for improving your PHP web applications, including accessing databases, generating robust Web forms, using page templating systems, creating and parsing XML documents, authenticating users, and much more.
In response to the existing shortage of documentation about the tools, author David Sklar packs this book with details about installing, configuring, and using each tool-along with plenty of examples tailored to PHP 4 and 5.
Sklar also lays out the details of Auth and HTML_QuickFormtwo hard working PEAR modules, so you don't have to code your own authentication system or Web form construction set! Also included are chapters on debugging programs, and increasing Web server speed. In short, you will learn to eliminate inefficiencies in PHP, and enhance performance without any code modification.
List of contents
1 Accessing Databases with DB.- 2 Accessing Databases with ADODB.- 3 Using HTML_QuickForm for Form Processing.- 4 Templating with Smarty.- 5 Performing Event-Based XML Parsing with XML_Parser.- 6 Developing Lightweight Web Services with XML_RPC.- 7 Developing Heavyweight Web Services with SOAP.- 8 Performing Easier XML Parsing with SimpleXML.- 9 Sending Mail.- 10 Working with Authentication, Users, and Passwords.- 11 Understanding PHP Internals.- 12 Profiling and Debugging with Xdebug.- 13 Accelerating with Code Caches.
Summary
This book is an essential guide to some of the best free add-ons to PHP. These add-ons, or tools, provide invaluable functionality for improving your PHP web applications, including accessing databases, generating robust Web forms, using page templating systems, creating and parsing XML documents, authenticating users, and much more.
In response to the existing shortage of documentation about the tools, author David Sklar packs this book with details about installing, configuring, and using each tool—along with plenty of examples tailored to PHP 4 and 5.
Sklar also lays out the details of Auth and HTML_QuickFormtwo hard working PEAR modules, so you don't have to code your own authentication system or Web form construction set! Also included are chapters on debugging programs, and increasing Web server speed. In short, you will learn to eliminate inefficiencies in PHP, and enhance performance without any code modification.
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From the reviews:
"This book intends to simplify programming tasks through the use ... . The intended audience is intermediate-to-advanced, although I believe it is also of great use to the uninitiated. The Introduction provides a solid introduction to the use of PEAR ... . The section on databases is required reading for anyone wishing to ... . The Smarty chapter is an excellent introduction into templating ... . Especially enjoyable is the chapter on PEAR's Mail_mime ... . I particularly enjoyed the level of detail given ... ." (Mitchell Pirtle, International PHP Magazine, Issue no. 4, 2004)
