Sams Teach Yourself PHP in 24 Hours
Matt Zandstra
Sams
This is not a PHP programming book. This book will teach you about the very basics of PHP syntax and structure and while it will not get you anywhere near proficiency, it will give you a very solid, albeit simple, foundation from which to continue. With literally thousands of included functions and thousands more specialized functions available for all forms of tasks, PHP is a rich and subtle language not easily learned in a hurry. This book will provide the foundation to continue exploring the language in a very straight forward and understandable presentation.

For example, the book covers arrays with 19 sections which gives a good knowledge base and allows the beginner to begin to use these incredibly useful entities but it doesn't come close to the available 77 array functions contained within the language. Or the 21 string functions covered in the book versus the 97 functions available in the language.

Anybody interested in learning PHP will also want to bookmark [...] as the definitive source of information regarding the language.

While knowledge of HTML/XHTML is not needed to learn PHP the typical usage of PHP will require a good understanding of markup languages and knowledge of HTTP will go a long way to making your life easier too. Because of PHP's versatility, the successful programmer will soon be learning SQL and XML to name only two.

I encourage any beginning PHP programmer to buy this book for the basics. To glimpse PHP programming issues, I would refer you to 'PHP Solutions: Dynamic web design made easy' by David Powers from Friends of Ed as the next step in you education.

PHP Solutions: Dynamic Web Design Made Easy