jQuery 1.3 with PHP
This is the first book sent to me from Packt where I wasn’t left dizzy from trying to understand just what it is the author was trying to get across. It looks like their proof-reader was awake for this one – totally awesome.
jQuery, as the vast majority of us already know, is a JavaScript library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. In other words it does all the heavy lifting and takes care of cross-browser compatibility issues so you don’t have to and thus allows you to focus on the work that you need to do without all those distractions.
“jQuery 1.3 with PHP” is aimed “for PHP application developers who want to improve their user interfaces through jQuery’s capabilities and responsiveness”. Over the course of ten chapters Verens starts the off with an introduction, then a series of ‘Quick Tricks’ that almost immediately help you add some measure of “Web 2.0″ functionality to what I’d term a “web 0.2 application” rather sharply.
The book ends with a chapter on Optimization – some of which you are bound to already know and some which are complete gems.
In the middle are chapters with mini-projects on tabs and accordians, forms and form validation, file management, calendars (and how to make your own google-calendar-like application), image manipulation, drag and drop and data tables.
In each case, projects are analysed and the required steps for each are outlined in the simplest terms – no extraneous buzzwords are used or are the projects over-analysed for the sake of pedantry.
I was a little surprised in some places where, for example, the json encoded output was not created via json_encode; but then thought not everyone is going to have PHP 5.2 or greater installed. Thumb forward a few pages and this is mentioned. So all’s o k.
It was good to see Kae suggesting use of the PEAR Validate package (or similar) in the Forms and Forms Validation chapter (chapter 4). I had to wonder if there was a PEAR package for creating and shunting down jQuery validation rules to the client – and found that there isn’t. That’s something to consider for later on, I guess.
The rest of the book is similarly both easy to read and easy to understand – my first port of call for learning how to do something that I’d almost term exotic with jQuery and with PHP in the background is usually Google but that is going to change (actually it already has).
Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if this books working title was “JQuery and PHP: The HowTo” – it is that good.
Now, this book is not for learning jQuery – that is not within its remit, but I would heartily recomend “jQuery 1.3 with PHP” by Kae Verens to anyone wanting to utilise jQuery from a PHP background.
nice review but what’s the level audience ? because only “for PHP application developers who want to improve their user interfaces through jQuery’s capabilities and responsiveness” is a bit vague
or i missed the part where you talk about it (it’s monday morning hey…)
Is it more for beginners or an advanced user will learn one thing or two ?
Good point – anything but beginner level to be honest; I think people with either intermediate or advanced levels of skill will learn a thing or two – maybe even three
I don’t understand what makes this book impressive (I didn’t read it yet). I love jquery, I love PHP, but these are 2 really different technologies. They don’t “have to” work together. You could use Jquery+python or PHP+dojo. Why do I need a book to explicitely explain me how jquery+PHP works ?
Are there any specific PHP+jQuery use cases the book will teach me ?
Regards.
@memoclic – the brief I was given when writing the book was that it was for intermediate PHP developers who want to branch into client-side programming.
I’ve not tailored this to beginners – basically I assume that you are a PHP programmer, and so in the book I only explain those things which are different from what you already know in PHP.
The book also includes a few tricks which I came up with and wrote about on my own blog. As an example, I assume one of the things Ken mentioned was an optimisation “gem” was the md5 trick for making sure clients always have a fresh copy of the js scripts, and yet allowing caching to be freely done.
If you don’t want to splash out on a paper book, there are PDFs available from Packt, and even some pirated versions out there if you like to “try before you buy”.
@gaalan yes.
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