How did you learn php???

I have read the php manual on [h[.net but am finding it difficult to understand

so, how did you learn php?

Example scripts. :D

Leaned by doing

brute force baby... the only way to fly!

:D

If I could, I would choose 1 & 2 ;)

I learned the language from the manual, then enhanced it a lot by reading articles @ phpbuilder.com.

I leard much of it from PHP.net, and knowing several programmers, so I could ask them anything, and they'd explain it...

Made it pretty easy, but learned alot from just reading scripts...

haha and I still haven't got around to learning it :bawling:

Anybody who can refer to somewhere good to learn php, then its appreciated. ;)

I learned most of it from the php.net manual but I learned how to interact with a MySQL database from a php/mysql book...

i can use variables, arrays, loops, ifs. else etc etc

but mysql seems a bit more difficult

think i will have to buy a good book on it

any suggestions

isn't the php cookbook meant to be good?

By getting eery free large php project and taking it apart line by line.

phpBB and postNuke among others.

I started learning by reading a tutorial on sitepoint then brought 2 books then just experiemented and played around and read a bit on php.net.

I learned C and C++ years ago. I was working at Cablevision as a Cisco Engineer and while there I was speaking to some the the system admins. They were telling me PHP is very easy to learn if you know C already. I went out and purchased a few books and I learned within a few weeks the basics of PHP and MySQL.

Good luck, it's a great lang to learn and of course if you have any technical or coding question feel free since after all we are all here to anwser any questions you might have..

Originally posted by jtrovato
I learned C and C++ years ago. I was working at Cablevision as a Cisco Engineer and while there I was speaking to some the the system admins. They were telling me PHP is very easy to learn if you know C already. I went out and purchased a few books and I learned within a few weeks the basics of PHP and MySQL.

Good luck, it's a great lang to learn and of course if you have any technical or coding question feel free since after all we are all here to anwser any questions you might have..

I just took code from various places, and after a while my positronic pathways adjusted to the new language with ease. ;)

I learned it from the first book I could find on PHP. Core PHP by Leon Atkinson. I think there is a new edition out now that is probably pretty good.

The book on php that I got is a pretty big one... close to 900 pages...
PHP and MySQL Web Development by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson.and i think it says SAMS or somethin... mb the compnay they work for...?

That's one of the better books. It takes you from knowing nothing to creating shopping carts with MySQL. I always use this book for ref.

John

Originally posted by Ahmad
If I could, I would choose 1 & 2 ;)

I learned the language from the manual, then enhanced it a lot by reading articles @ phpbuilder.com.

Yep, I'm the same.

I also learnt from looking at various tutorials listed on http://php.resourceindex.com

--Shaun

um, i took a class on c and c#, then a class on c++. sense i learned vb6 all bymyself and felt good at c++, php to me was just a mix between vb and c++, more towards c++ though, as for functions, i used php.net :D

php.net was a great resource for me when I needed to learn about a specific function. I learned php by all 4 of the methods listed above except online tutorials. I got one book that simplified it into dummy terms (quickstart to php) then I needed to move up to a few bigger books. Downloading free scripts and reading them as well as asking questions on alt.php (newsgroup) got me on the right track to begin with. PHP is a very elegant language to code in. It is my favorite.
Good luck.

I picked it up in a few days by using php.net, and looking at other scripts to see what they did. Knowing ASP helped as the two have similar structures. As I've developed, any time I've become stuck somewhere I've referred to a tutorial or forum/resource like phpbuilder for help and have sorted out what's wrong. I've also got the cookbook for occasional reference though I very rarely use it.

LEARNED php??
heh
Well, if you insist. Actually, I found that with a c background, php became pretty much second nature to me.
Originally I got involved with PHP through PHP-Nuke (don't hold it against me please!!:P), and still use Nuke today, because it does things that I don't want to create myself. Of course, I have to manage things and add things and subtract things, but that's nothing really.

I'd say my best resource has been php.net though, for what I had problems with. It's not THAT hard to comprehend and understand

First I read "PHP Fast and Easy Web Development" by Meloni. Great if you know absolutely nothing about anything except HTML, but it teaches you some bad habits. Then I used "Core PHP Programming: Using PHP to Build Dynamic Web Sites" by Atkinson and "MySQL" by DuBois (the first 1/3 is what I needed to get an "ah HA!!" experience...well worth the price of the book) while developing a site.

By my patented Vietnam-War coding style, of course.

A couple years back I dropped myself into the middle of a large PHP project and had to fight my way out. :P Ended up carrying a couple fellow programmers to safety as well, but I'm still waiting for my medal. :D

Nothing to it with a C/PERL background.

Sorry to double post.

I agree with the statement right above my last:

I've referred about a dozen people to Julie Meloni's PHP books. I was impressed with some of the real-world examples that many of our less experienced programmers could take right out of the book and start tweaking.

Highly recommended if you're just getting started to server-side scripting/PHP.

For the experienced, php.net, the online manual function comments and the mailing lists are invaluable.

I learn php from some book, manuals and source code.:D :D

Originally posted by mAgz
The book on php that I got is a pretty big one... close to 900 pages...
PHP and MySQL Web Development by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson.and i think it says SAMS or somethin... mb the compnay they work for...?

Thats the book I used to learn with too.

Hello, I do not have any language experience! I am fluent in HTML only, is there anyway I can learn PHP on my own? any good website that will walk me through very detail?

thanks guys in advance!

I was making programs with Delphi and before PHP I was writing the programs with Perl. I mean PHP was so easy to learn. The online tutorials help me. But I sometimes use PHP Manual when writing programs.

I learned HTML by "view source" so learning PHP by example was pretty natural. Then I installed PHP on my machine, downloaded PHP.NET and use the manual for reference.

php.net

phpbuilder.net

and

devshed.com

Are sites i'll go to for reference. No books really... just hacking it out on my own.

I went from hacking scripts such as phpnuke/oscommerce, to writing faster cleaner smaller coded sites of the same type : )

Just taught myself from php.net. However being a Perl and C programmer beforehand helped massively as the structure of PHP is very similar.

PHP.net
This might sound funny but this one book by Julie C. Meloni called "PHP fast&easy web develelopment" and few PHP help forums.

The user contributed annotations to the php.net manual are invaluable!

I programmed in C/C++ for 4 years in high school, Java for 2 years and dabbled in Perl for 6 months. The move to PHP wasn't a big deal.

There was a company that I interned at as a sysadmin. A linux kernerl hacker there also knew PHP and taught it to me, and I developed some internal webpages for the company using PHP.

If you want some books on PHP, here are some that I have read through and recommended to others. The links are to Amazon because they have a more complete view of the books and its contents. If you plan to purchase tech books online, I recommend BookPool (http://www.bookpool.com). They have a large selection, and their prices are usually cheaper than Amazon's.

SAMS
They're known for their "Teach Your Something in 24 Hours" series of books, which in the past have been pretty horrible. Recently, however, better books coming out.
PHP and MySQL Web Developement, by Luke Welling, Laura Thomson (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0672317842/qid=1031909996/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/103-2051221-7253454?v=glance&s=books)

Wrox
Wrox also publishes decent PHP books:
Professional PHP4 Programming, by Deepak Thomas, Wankyu Choi, John Coggeshall, Ken Egervari, Luis Argerich, Devon O'Dell, Jon Parise, Harish Rawat, James Moore, (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1861006918/qid=1031910142/sr=1-5/ref=sr_1_5/103-2051221-7253454?v=glance&s=books&n=53)

Beginning PHP4, by Chris Lea, Wankyu Choi, Allan Kent, Ganesh Prasad, Chris Ullman (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1861003730/qid=1031910142/sr=1-7/ref=sr_1_7/103-2051221-7253454?v=glance&s=books&n=53)

MySQL
New Riders, like SAMS was horrible in the past, but they are starting to come out with some really good books, especially the MySQL Reference.

MySQL (OTHER NEW RIDERS), by Paul DuBois, Michael Widenius (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0735709211/qid=1031910530/sr=1-5/ref=sr_1_5/103-2051221-7253454?v=glance&s=books&n=5)

DuBois's book is considered by many to be the best MySQL manual/reference in print. He'll explain things from indexing, to tempory tables to joins and how queries are executed. A good book to have around in general.


Websites
PHP Builder (http://www.phpbuilder.com)
I remember PHP Builder was around for a very long time. They're forums were an AWESOME resource for help with Installation, PHP, Databases, Windows, etc. They have recently upgraded their fourms from an in-house software to vBulletin.

SitePoint (http://www.sitepoint.com)
These guys are professional, and they have great articles for PHP and web developement in general. Kevin Yank wrote a fantastic article on how to intergrate Tomcat with Apache on Windows. It worked prefectly for me, and I now have an Apache server on my Win2K workstation at home that can run PHP and JSP/Servlets. WOOT!

Zend Developer Community Pages (http://www.zend.com/developers.php)
Zend is the company that owns the PHP4 engine. Their developer site offers great tutorials and scripts that others have sumbitted. What better place to learn PHP than from the people who put it out?


Advanced things
Once you learn PHP, I'm sure you want to move on to more interesting topics and projects that would be benificial to you in the real world. For that, I would recommend that you look source code from major projects.

phpBB (http://www.phpbb.com) is a forum software that supports multiple databases, has manny of the same features as vBulletin, and is open source (free as in beer). Their code is EXTREMELY clean. The design (in terms of code and structure of the app) is very well done, and you can learn a lot from the way they abstract their files and functionality. I can't emphasize enough how useful it is to learn a language by reading through well written and designed code.

When you get around to learning about template systems, look into Smarty (http://smarty.php.net\). Unlike projects such as FastTemplate, Smarty is much more powerful, clean, and fast. It kinda (really loosely) works like JSP in that it "compiles" your code and templates together into pure PHP files. It's a long story, and I can elaborate further if you want. Just look into it. Smarty is AWESEOME and I *think* is officially endorsed by the PHP Group. I could be wrong though.

Hope this helps.

Like many others here I had taken a couple C++ classes in college. That gave me the basics on how functions work. After that, I learned by getting sample scripts that I wanted to use, open up the source code and figure out how it works. Then I'd use bits that I learned to create my own scripts.

From example scripts and the PHP.net Manual

any good tutorials specifically for c++ programmers?

Books, tutorials, forums... you should take advantage of them all. I don't think its fair to say one in particular because I used them all.

You have to check Sitepoint they realy helped me alot!

ok ill check them out