Expert PHP and MySQL®

INTRODUCTION

PHP AND MYSQL HAVE BEEN USED FOR YEARS to power some of the most popular websites and open source applications anywhere. It's no secret that the Web has evolved. Modern web sites are expected to be dynamic and the user count for popular sites is now measured in the millions.

This book examines some of the technologies and techniques needed to make robust and scalable applications perform in today's high-demand world. Early chapters focus on essential concepts. For example:

• Object Oriented Programming

• Design Patterns

• Advanced MySQL queries

Later chapters get down into the trenches and focus on ways to improve application performance through caching with memcached (and others), full-text search with Sphinx, and multitasking with Gearman.

Today's PHP programmer can't be afraid to get their hands dirty. By the time this book is done you will be well on your way to extending PHP and MySQL using C. In PHP we cover extension writing. In MySQL we cover User Defined Functions.

The book focuses on critical skills and best practices in the areas of security, optimization, and software architecture. The examples are written with the assumption that you already know the basics so common code is occasionally stripped out to make the examples more readable and focused. And as such you will see examples in the book that don't check the return value of a function for errors. Don't put code like that onto your live server; fix it first! You know how.

This book will give you the tools that you ...