Book Description

Beginning PHP and MySQL E-Commerce: From Novice to Professional, 2nd Edition is the sequel of the my previous PHP and MySQL e-commerce book.

This tutorial has been fully updated to cover the latest versions of the software packages (PHP 5 and MySQL 5), and improved coding and presentation techniques. The book good programming practices, including the separation of presentation code, business code, and data access code using a 3-tier architecture. PDO (PHP Data Objects) is used to connect to the database, and MySQL 5 stored procedures are used to store the data logic. The Smarty templating engine is used to create the presentation layer.

The book is still under heavy development. I will provide more details soon, but just to feed your apetite, here's a list with some of the features that are either totally new, or have been heavily updated for this second edition:

• W3C compliant presentation using CSS
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) enhancements using mod_rewrite, regular expressions, and PHP
• Product attributes
• Product searching using MySQL's FULL-TEXT searching feature
• Similar products and advanced product recommendations
• Use MySQL stored procedures - the significant new feature in MySQL 5
• Custom shopping cart with AJAX-enabled shopping cart summary
• Payment processing using PayPal, DataCash, and Authorize.net

Also, just as the first edition, the book is a wonderful step-by-step tutorial for those who learn best by doing. It will teach you how to build an online product catalog with shopping cart, checkout, product searching, product recommendations, admin features, customer accounts, customer reviews, Amazon E-Commerce Service (ECS) integration, an order processing system that accepts electronic payments, and more.

Who Is This Book For?

Beginning PHP and MySQL E-Commerce: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition is aimed at developers looking for a tutorial approach to building a full e-commerce web site from design to deployment. However, it's assumed that you have mastered the basics of PHP and have some experience working with relational databases. A sample chapter will also be available to help you decide if this book is right for you. You can also learn more by reading about the first edition of the book.

Also, here are a few facts about this book:

• This book is not a reference, but a tutorial. You won't find tables with PHP functions, MySQL commands, etc. Instead, you'll be taken step by step to build a fully featured e-commerce web site, by creating a feature in each chapter. Jason Gilmore's Beginning PHP and MySQL 5: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition, is a great companion of this book.
• For the presentation layer, this book uses Smarty. We believe that using a templating engine is the way to go when building applications that need to be extensible and easy to maintain on the long run. However, Smarty does imply an additional layer of complexity when initially creating the foundations, and some people dislike this aspect.
• This book should not be your first book on PHP or MySQL, unless you're experienced with other similar technologies. The words "From Novice to Professional" from the book's cover have proven to mislead customers of the previous edition into thinking the book will teach PHP and MySQL from scratch. It does not. If you're a total beginner, I recommend Kevin Yank's Build Your Own Database Driven Web Site with PHP and MySQL, Third Edition.

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