Robin Nixon

I know for a fact that I have learned plenty from reading other people's code, both on the web and in cookbooks.

It's one of the quickest ways I know of learning new techniques.

Hi everyone.

Todays' the final day of my Web Developer's Cookbook promo, so make sure you get your question in if you want a chance to win a free copy.

And when the promo's over, may I ask whoever wins the free copies of my Cookbook to let me know what you think of it when you get it? And if you could maybe post your thoughts here (or even on Amazon) so that other users can find out about it I'd be especialy grateful.

Cheers!

- Robin.

Have you tried Zend Server CE?

It's free and by the people who wrote PHP. I recommend it above all other Wamps, particularly since I hear of far fewer problems (such as this one) from people installing it.

http://www.zend.com/en/products/server-ce/

I've uploaded an introductory video for The Web Developer's Cookbook to YouTube, which gives you a basic background to what's in it:

http://youtu.be/sNdJUL1fELI

Thanks,

I also neglected to mention that it is a hefty 1,000 page book (and one of the heaviest I have picked up : ) so you really get value for your money at just $31.68 on Amazon (and it's available as an eBook too BTW).

- Robin.

Raghavan Muthu wrote:

Robin Nixon wrote:Thanks everyone,

The contents is drawn from my own personal toolkit, with all routines fully documented, all variables functions and classes detailed, and plenty of information on how to use and adapt each recipe.

Perfect. Now I understand what had driven you to write the book.

Using these recipes, nowadays I find I have to write very little code, as just about everything I need is ready-made

Readers of this book will find their web development is substantially streamlined by not having to write basic functionality, leaving you free to concentrate on fully developing the interesting or more novel features of a site - resulting in better and faster-designed websites.

Excellent. That should be the ultimate objective. Thanks for the efforts Robin

There seems to be a good selection of PHP debugging tools at the following web page:

http://pelfusion.com/tools/how-to-debug-php-code-and-useful-php-debugging-tools/

In my view if you are competent with Java you'll have little difficulty with PHP. It's also a language based on C-style syntax, and it also supports OOP.

If you are new to PHP then my cookbook could help you quickly get up to speed as it comes with thousands of lines of code you can draw on and learn from.

Raghavan Muthu wrote:Thats a good thing Robin. Thank you

As per your reply to the welcome thread, MySQLSanitizeString() is of your own codework/toolkit. Is it?

Yes, it strings together built-in PHP functions (and deals with magic quotes if they are being used) to result in a single function for sanitizing with MySQL.

Here's PHP Recipe 27 from my book, The Web Developer's Cookbook:

function EmbedYouTubeVideo($id, $width, $height, $high, $full, $auto) { if ($width && !$height) $height = $width * 0.7500 if (!$width && $height) $width = $height * 1.3333 if (!$width) $width = 480 if (!$height) $height = 385 $fs = ($full == 1 ) ? 'allowfullscreen' : ''; $hd = ($high == 1 ) ? '?hd=1' : ''; $as = ($hd == '') ? '?' : '&'; $ap = ($auto == 1 ) ? "$as" . 'autoplay=1' : ''; return "<iframe class='youtube-player' type='text/html' width='$width' height='$height' src='http://www.youtube.com/embed/$id$hd$ap' $fs></iframe>"; }

This recipe takes the YouTube ID of a video and the parameters required to display it to your requirements. The default dimensions are 480 x 385. The recipe accepts these arguments:

• $id A YouTube video ID such as “VjnygQ02aW4”
• $width The display width
• $height The display height
• $high If set to 1 enable high quality display, if available
• $full If set to 1 enable the video to play in full screen mode
• $auto If set to 1 start the video playing automatically on page load

Thanks for recommending my book, Learning PHP, MySQL & JavaScript, Aniket.

You may be interested to know that the 2nd edition is to be published in about 4 months - it will also include info on using CSS with PHP & JavaScript.

Hi Raghavan,

In answer to your questions:

1. Yes, security is incorporated wherever necessary. For exanple, salting is used to obfuscate any passwords saved in MySQL (which are then stored as unencryptable MD5s).
2. Two recipes provided are SanitizeString() and MySQLSanitizeString(), which will prevent SQL injection/XSS. Recipes in both JavaScript and PHP are also provided to thoroughly process any user input, and which can strip out anything malicious.
3. There is not much HTML5 in these recipes, since most of the tasks are easily accomplished in standard HTML.
4. A PHP recipe is provided to handle file uploads to a web server.

- Robin.

Thanks everyone,

To briefly summarise the book, there are 100 PHP, 100 JavaScript, and 100 CSS recipes in it, covering just about every feature I've had to write for myself as a web developer. The contents is drawn from my own personal toolkit, with all routines fully documented, all variables functions and classes detailed, and plenty of information on how to use and adapt each recipe.

All the recipes are assembled into three files you can include in your web pages to access them, giving you solutions for all of server side and client side programming (including Ajax), and easy styling with CSS (including my own invention of superclasses - enhanced classes that work a little like a scripting language). Using these recipes, nowadays I find I have to write very little code, as just about everything I need is ready-made

Readers of this book will find their web development is substantially streamlined by not having to write basic functionality, leaving you free to concentrate on fully developing the interesting or more novel features of a site - resulting in better and faster-designed websites.

Please feel free to ask me any questions about the book!

Yes, I'm still here (there's a lot of good discussion in this forum).

Anyway, I just wanted to say that for anyone still interested, you can view the PDF of the first chapter of my book, here:

http://www.mhprofessional.com/downloads/products/0071756337/01-nixon_chap01.pdf

Right, I'll stop talking about the book now, and simply participate in the forums.