Look, lets face it, I'm a very enthusiastic person. When I like something, I get very very excited and enthuse at great length. So, if you're looking for a negative book review from me then you probably won't find one ... I've said it before ... I'm asked to review a lot of books but I seldom review a book I dislike ... in other words, if the book isn't worth a review then the review probably won't be done ... I guess I'm just trying to say I like this book, in fact, I would go so far as to say this is the book I've been waiting for ... the book that fulfills my expectations of an instructional book ... Why? Because, with regard to developing dynamic websites, it's all covered here.





With chapter titles like:

• Coding Principles
• Processing Forms
• Databases
• Content Management
• Cookies and authentication
• Building a website with PHP

.... and, numerous appendices available on the book's website ... you can see at a glance that Codin' for the Web covers all bases. If you're not convinced the first chapter title, Coding Principles, covers:

• How PHP Works
• Variables
• Numeric Variables
• Operators
• Strings
• Arrays
• Functions
• Code Structures
• Loops
• Objects

Of course chapter titles and chapter content mean nothing if the explanation is unclear. Let me assure you, the explanations are very very clear. Charles Wyke-Smith tells it like it is ... as an example read a little snippet from the book on Creating a Self-Requesting Page ... "When a visitor submits a form by clicking the GO button, the form data is passed to the page stated in the form element's action attribute. Typically, this page is the same page as the form itself. It may seem strange to request a page from itself, but by placing the PHP that processes the form's XHTML code and having the page request itself every time the form is submitted, we can test the submitted data and easily redisplay the form to the user in the event of errors, along with helpful PHP-generated directions to correct them." Clear, precise ... and replace PHP with ASP or any other scripting language and you can port the knowledge from this book to suit your environment.

This book is a keeper and I'm going hunting for more from Mr Wyke-Smith, because once you find gold you keep digging. A double thumbs up.