Best PHP Books 2024

PHP & MySQL: Server-side Web Development

Learn PHP, the programming language used to build sites like Facebook, Wikipedia and WordPress, then discover how these sites store information in a database (MySQL) and use the database to create the web pages.

This full-color book is packed with inspiring code examples, infographics and photography that not only teach you the PHP language and how to work with databases, but also show you how to build new applications from scratch. It demonstrates practical techniques that you will recognize from popular sites where visitors can:

Register as a member and log in
Create articles, posts and profiles that are saved in a database
Upload their own images and files
Automatically receive email notifications
Like and comment on posts.

To show you how to apply the skills you learn, you will build a complete content management system, enhanced with features that are commonly seen on social networks.

Written by best-selling HTML & CSS and JavaScript & jQuery author Jon Duckett, this book uses a unique visual approach, with step-by-step instructions, practical code examples and pro tips that will teach you how to build modern database-driven websites using PHP.

This is one of the best PHP book for beginners in 2023.

Learning PHP, MySQL & JavaScript: With jQuery, CSS & HTML5 (5th Edition)

by Robin Nixon. Build interactive, data-driven websites with the potent combination of open source technologies and web standards, even if you have only basic HTML knowledge. With the latest edition of this popular hands-on guide, you’ll tackle dynamic web programming using the most recent versions of today’s core technologies: PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, CSS, HTML5, jQuery, and the powerful React library.

Web designers will learn how to use these technologies together while picking up valuable web programming practices along the way, including how to optimize websites for mobile devices. You’ll put everything together to build a fully functional social networking site suitable for both desktop and mobile browsers.

Explore MySQL from database structure to complex queries
Use the MySQL PDO extension, PHP’s improved MySQL interface
Create dynamic PHP web pages that tailor themselves to the user
Manage cookies and sessions and maintain a high level of security
Enhance JavaScript with the React library
Use Ajax calls for background browser-server communication
Style your web pages by acquiring CSS skills
Implement HTML5 features, including geolocation, audio, video, and the canvas element
Reformat your websites into mobile web apps

This is the Best PHP book in 2023.

PHP Crash Course

This book will take you from beginner-level to professional PHP programming, through hundreds of in-depth examples and hands-on exercises. You’ll explore best practices for developing fast, secure, and easy-to-maintain websites, while establishing a broad foundation of programming knowledge and experience.

You’ll learn how to:

Create consistent, modern-looking web pages with easily customizable templates by combining dynamic PHP scripts, static HTML code, and Bootstrap styling
Write server-side scripts for responding to HTTP requests, processing forms, and validating data
Use browser sessions to implement shopping carts and user logins, and to store other user data
Write scripts that can communicate with MySQL and other PDO databases, enabling database-driven, data-rich web applications
Implement modern, best-practice website security, including user data sanitization, session-based logins using hashed passwords, and database prepared statements
Save time with up-to-date, professional, open-source tools, including Composer dependency management and the Twig templating library

PHP & MySQL: Novice to Ninja

by Tom Butler is a practical guide to understanding all of the tools, principles, and practices required to create a professional online application using PHP and MySQL. This extremely practical and entertaining book covers everything from installation to constructing a complete online content management system, and has been completely updated to include PHP 8 and modern best practices.

Learn everything there is to know about PHP syntax.
Learn SQL and database design principles.
Write reliable, maintainable code that follows best practices.

Head First PHP & MySQL

by Lynn Beighley & Michael Morrison is the ultimate guide to PHP. You will start by learning PHP fundamentals along with MySQL. This includes topics covered like form validation, arrays, session IDs, cookies, database queries and joins, file I/O operations and content managements. You will then move on to advanced PHP. With PHP quizzes and exercises will help you practice PHP skills you’ve gained.

You will be learning PHP scripting language to:

• Use PHP scripting language to transform static HTML pages into dynamic web pages
• Create and populate your own MySQL database tables, and work with data stored in files
• Perform sophisticated MySQL queries with joins, and refine your results with LIMIT and ORDER BY
• Protect your data from SQL injection attacks
• Dynamically display text based on session info and create images on the fly
• Pull syndicated data from other sites using PHP and XML

The Joy of PHP

A Beginner’s Guide to Programming Interactive Web Applications with PHP and mySQL by Alan Forbes Third edition now with additional chapters.

PHP: Learn PHP in One Day and Learn It Well. PHP for Beginners with Hands-on Project

By Jamie Chan teaches you the fundamentals of PHP through a hands-on approach. Before reading this book, you should have a basic understanding of HTML and SQL. You’ll learn:

Handling HTML forms
PHP security
Programming using objects
Handling exceptions

Murach’s PHP and MySQL

by Joel Murach and Ray Harris. Right from the start, this book teaches you how to use PHP and MySQL for web apps, the way the pros do. In fact, you’ll create a database-driven website that implements the MVC pattern in the first 6 chapters! Then, the rest of the chapters show you how to build out your PHP and MySQL skills to the professional level, using today’s best practices.

Programming PHP: Creating Dynamic Web Pages 4th Edition

Why is PHP the most widely used programming language on the web? This updated edition teaches you everything you need to know to create effective web applications using the latest PHP 7.4 features. You’ll start with an overview, then dive into the language syntax, programming techniques, and other details, using practical example that demonstrate both correct usage and common idioms. If you have a working knowledge of HTML, authors Kevin Tatroe and Peter MacIntyre provide lots of style tips and practical programming tips in a clear and concise way to help you become a top-notch PHP programmer.

Understand what is possible when using PHP programs
Learn the fundamentals of the language, including data types, variables, operators, and control-flow declarations.
Explore functions, strings, arrays, and objects
Apply common web application techniques such as form processing, data validation, session tracking, and cookies.
Interact with relational databases like MySQL or NoSQL databases like MongoDB
Generate dynamic images, create PDF files and analyze XML files
Learn secure scripts, error handling, performance tuning, and other advanced tools

PHP 8 Programming Tips, Tricks and Best Practices: A practical guide to PHP 8 features, usage changes, and advanced programming techniques

Thanks to its ease of use, PHP is a highly popular programming language used on over 78% of all web servers connected to the Internet. PHP 8 Programming Tips, Tricks, and Best Practices will help you to get up-to-speed with PHP 8 quickly. The book is intended for any PHP developer who wants to become familiar with the cool new features available in PHP 8, and covers areas where developers might experience backward compatibility issues with their existing code after a PHP 8 update. The book thoroughly explores best practices, and highlights ways in which PHP 8 enforces these practices in a much more rigorous fashion than its earlier versions.

You’ll start by exploring new PHP 8 features in the area of object-oriented programming (OOP), followed by enhancements at the procedural level. You’ll then learn about potential backward compatible breaks and discover best practices for improving performance. The last chapter of the book gives you insights into PHP async, a revolutionary new way of programming, by providing detailed coverage and examples of asynchronous programming using the Swoole extension and Fibers.

By the end of this PHP book, you’ll not only have mastered the new features, but you’ll also know exactly what to watch out for when migrating older PHP applications to PHP 8.
What you will learn

Gain a comprehensive understanding of the new PHP 8 object-oriented features
Discover new PHP 8 procedural programming enhancements
Understand improvements in error handling in PHP 8
Identify potential backward compatibility issues
Avoid traps due to changes in PHP extensions
Find out which features have been deprecated and/or removed in PHP 8
Become well-versed with programming best practices enforced by PHP 8

PHP and MySQL Web Development (Developer’s Library) 5th Edition

PHP and MySQL Web Development (Developer’s Library) 5th Edition by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson. PHP and MySQL are popular open source technologies ideal for rapidly developing database-based web applications. PHP is a powerful programming language designed to allow developers to quickly build highly functional web applications, and MySQL is a fast and reliable database that integrates well with PHP and is suitable for dynamic Internet applications.

PHP for the Web: Visual QuickStart Guide 5th Edition

by Larry Ullman starts from the beginning to take a tour of the programming language or search for specific tasks to learn exactly what they need. This visual, task-based reference guide uses step-by-step instructions and lots of screenshots to teach beginner and intermediate users to get started with php open source programming language. The best php books for web development readers through the ins and outs of PHP 5 and PHP 7, offering more efficient ways to meet everyday needs.

Beginning users, who want an in-depth introduction to the technology, and intermediate users, who are looking for a practical reference, will find what they need here, in simple language and through easily accessible examples including:

The simple visual approach uses demos and real life examples to guide you through dynamic web development using PHP and show you what to do step by step.
Concise steps and explanations get you up and running in no time.
The essential reference guide keeps you coming back again and again.
Whether you’re a programming newbie or a first-time PHP veteran, this book will teach you everything you need to know, including the latest PHP changes and more efficient ways to meet your daily needs.

Modern PHP: New Features and Good Practices

by Josh Lockhart will help you learn PHP best practices and new features. It is assumed you have a basic understanding of PHP programming language before reading this book. You will learn about all the new PHP updates and how to use them. This PHP programming language book will teach you PHP best practices for application architecture and planning, databases, security, testing, debugging, and deployment.

This PHP book will help you:

• Learn modern PHP features including namespaces, traits, generators, and closures
• Follow PHP best practices for application security, working with databases, errors and exceptions
• Learn tools and techniques for deploying, tuning, testing, and profiling your PHP applications
• Explore Facebook’s HVVM and Hack language implementations to see how they affect modern PHP
• Build a local development environment that matches your production server

This is one of the best advanced PHP books in 2023.

PHP Cookbook

by David Sklar & Adam Trachtenberg is the classic PHP cookbook that has inspired many PHP developers. The content includes over 350 recipes that solve a wide range of PHP problems. Data types, databases, web development, basic building blocks and even RESTful APIs are discussed. PHP Cookbook recipes all contain easily implementable code that you can use right away. Each PHP scripting language recipe is explained, teaching you what you just did. This book has PHP recipes that teach you:

• Basic Program building blocks: variables, functions, classes, and objects
• web development: cookies, forms, sessions, and authentication
• Database access using PDO, SQLite, and other extensions
• RESTful API clients and servers, including HTTP, XML, and OAuth
• Learning PHP Key concepts: email, regular expressions, and graphics creation
• Designing robust applications: security and encryption, error handling, debugging and testing, and performance tuning
• Files, directories, and PHP Command Line Interface
• Popular libraries and package managers such as Composer and PECL

Mastering PHP 7

by Branko Ajzele will help you learn PHP 7 programming. This book is for intermediate PHP developers. You will understand and use advanced programming concepts in PHP 7. This PHP book will help you learn the newest tools introduced in PHP 7. Latest additions to PHP ecosystem including serverless architecture and reactive programming paradigm are explored. You will learn about PHP dependency injection and design patterns. You will be learning PHP scripting language topics:

• Omplement logging and error handling during PHP development
• Build services with SOAP, REST and Apache Trift
• Benefits of serverless architecture
• Basic principles of PHP reactive programming to write asynchronous PHP code
• Implement several important PHP design patterns
• Write efficient PHP code by executing dependency injection
• Magic methods
• Microservice architecture
• PHP performance optimization.
• Command-line area tools and processes
• Control the development process with proper debugging and profiling

This is one of the best PHP 7 books in 2023.