What makes this book a little different from others on PHP is that it steps away from a tutorial style, and instead focuses on the achievement of practical goals with a minimum of effort. To that extent, you should be able to use many of the solutions provided here in a more or less โplug and playโ manner, rather than having to read this book from cover to cover.
Although it was originally conceived as a procedural programming language, in recent years PHP has proven increasingly successful as a language for the development of object oriented solutions. This was further compounded by the public opening in January 2003 of the PHP Application and Extension Repository (PEAR), which provides a growing collection of reusable and well maintained solutions for architectural problems (such as Web form generation and validation) regularly encountered by PHP developers around the world.
The emphasis this book places on taking advantage of reusable components to build your PHP Web applications reflects another step away from the focus of many current PHP-related books. Although you wonโt find extensive discussions of object oriented application design, reading The PHP Anthology, Volume I: Foundations and Volume II: Applications from cover to cover will, through a process of osmosis, help you take your PHP coding skills to the next level, setting you well on your way to constructing applications that can stand the test of time.