Author:	Matt Zandstra
Published:	June 2010
Publisher:	Apress
Reviewer's Rating:	4/5

PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice is the book I’ve been looking for. As a novice PHP developer it answered a lot of the questions I’ve had about the next steps to becoming an effective developer. Through the PHP object model, design patterns, and then putting it all together this is a must have book for any one wanting to take the next steps in their PHP knowledge.

The PHP object section is worth the cost of admission alone with this title. Not only covering the updates to PHP 5.3 but showing how to use them. From the  coverage of the php “magic functions” to those of you struggling to put together a solid object model this is one of the most clearly written descriptions I’ve read. The examples of how to use abstract classes and inheritance effectively are especially helpful and setup a great transition to working with design patterns.

Design Patterns make up the meat of this book, and rightly so. I finally get the purpose of design patterns and how to use them with my work. Although, I’m by far not an expert on the topic, from a learning perspective, it is a spot on effective at teaching the principles of this sometimes complicated area.br

The Practice portion of this book is the only area I could see some better coverage on.  While the topics and tools are covered expertly, it feels dated. From my experience with the PHP/Open source community, the tools covered are being eclipsed by distributed version control, and tighter IDE support. While I know folks are still using SVN, it would have been nice to see an updated chapter on using git or Mercurial.

PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice is an excellent book. If you are wanting to learn more about the very important topics covered, then this is probably the best starting point out there.

View more information about PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice at the publisher's site