Many people under us have read PHP books. Some of us were quite happy with what they learned, some are very dissapointed.
With this thread I hope to find the best books, both for advanced and beginning programmers. So we can get a list of good books worth buying and reading.
Kickoff:
Title: Pro PHP
Author: Kevin McArthur
Price: $31.49 at
Amazon
Level: Advanced
Pro PHP is a new book, it got released in March this year which means that all code in the book is nice and up to date.
The book is for all programmers (like me) who have enough experience in PHP to create cool things, know good OOP programming and have little framework experience. The book covers quite some intressting subjects like advanced OOP, Programming patterns, PHP 6 (preview), testing, SVN, Zend Framework, MCV and
much more.
Im at 1/4 of the book and already I have learned a hell-lot of new stuff! I thought I had a very good understanding of PHP, but there were things I never even heard of (like the Reflection API).
A little downside of the book is that some subject are quite slow and can take up 10 pages of the book while you already understand it after 1 or 2 pages. And some you can't understand in 2 pages will only have 2 pages.
But in the end, if I would rate the book for so far i have read it now I would give it a good 8.5/10. Which means that it's a must-read in my opinion :)