A compilation of best practice solutions to common Web Development problems in PHP, focusing on the achievement of practical goals by applying well-structured, object orientated software design principles. Volume 1 covers the foundations of PHP including writing portable and reusable code, storing and extracting data from files, manipulating text, working with email and error handling. In addition to being an excellent reference with over 60 customizable solutions, the book acts as an excellent primer for Object Orientated Programming. PHP 5 has now been released and has been given significant OOP features, which are a must-learn for PHP Developers. All code in the book is backwards compatible with earlier versions of PHP.

Table of Contents:
Preface Who should read this book? What s covered in this book? The Book s Website The SitePoint Forums The SitePoint Newsletters Your Feedback Acknowledgements PHP Basics Where do I get help? How do I fix an error that PHP finds in my script? How do I include one PHP script in another? How do I write portable PHP code? Further Reading Object Oriented PHP What are the basics of object oriented PHP? How do references work in PHP? How do I take advantage of inheritance? How do objects interact? Further Reading PHP and MySQL How do I access a MySQL database? How do I fetch data from a table? How do I resolve errors in my SQL queries? How do I add or modify data in my database? How do I solve database errors caused by quotes/apostrophes? How do I create flexible SQL statements? How do I find out how many rows I ve selected? After inserting a row, how do I find out its row number? How do I search my table? How do I back up my database? How do I repair a corrupt table? Do I really need to write SQL? Further Reading Files How do I read a local file? How do I modify a local file? How do I get information about a local file? How do I examine directories with PHP? How do I display the PHP source code online? How do I store configuration information in a file? How do I access a file on a remote server? How do I use FTP from PHP? How do I manage file downloads with PHP? How do I create compressed ZIP/TAR files with PHP? Further Reading Text Manipulation How do I solve problems with text content in HTML documents? How do I make changes to the contents of a string? How do I implement custom formatting code? How do I implement a bad word filter? How do I validate submitted data? How do I filter out undesirable HTML code? Further Reading Dates and Times How do I store dates in MySQL? How do I solve common date problems? How do I build an online calendar? How do I deal with time zones? How do I time a PHP script? How do I schedule batch jobs with PHP? Further Reading Images MIME Types How do I create thumbnail images? How do I add a watermark to an image? How do I display charts and graphs with PHP? How do I prevent hot linking of images? Further Reading Email How do I simplify the generation of complex emails? How do I add attachments to messages? How do I send HTML email? How do I mail a group of people? How do I handle incoming mail with PHP? Further Reading Web Page Elements How do I display data in a table? How do I build a result pager? How do I handle HTML forms in PHP? How do I upload files with PHP? How do I build effective navigation with PHP and MySQL? How do I make search engine friendly URLs in PHP? Further Reading Error Handling How do I implement a custom error handler with PHP? How do I log and report errors? How do I display errors gracefully? Further Reading PHP Configuration Configuration Mechanisms Key Security and Portability Settings Includes and Execution Settings Error-Related Settings Miscellaneous Settings Hosting Provider Checklist General Issues PHP-Related Issues Security Checklist The Top Security Vulnerabilities Working with PEAR Installing PEAR The PEAR Package Manager Installing Packages Manually Index