PHP 5 in Practice
PHP 5 in Practiceis a 'cookbook' or 'problem and solution' style  book.  In fact, it is the spiritual successor to the PHP Developer's Cookbook, also by Sam's Publishing.When writing this book, we attempted to avoid the common pitfall in these 'cookbook' type technical references can take, where so many of the examples/solutions are so simplistic, to be concepts explained/answered by a single function call. Therefore instead, we focused on presenting real world problems, with in  some cases a rather beefy solution presented.  The more 'simple' problems/solutions still exist, but only in the form of a 'quick hits' section at the beginning of each chapter.   This is to present a number of PHP functions that by themselves can solve many of your problems, without spending whole paragraphs on them.In the end, while you can read this book cover-to-cover, we hope it serves as a great reference manual, sitting beside you while you work. Available for you to pick up and reference a solution that you'd scanned  earlier.   Or for just parts that interest you, in order to spark your imagination into directions that will solve your own problems.--Eli White(Elliott White III)