"PHP 5 e-commerce" by Packt

I've just finished reading "PHP 5 e-commerce" published by Packt Publishing and wanted to provide a review.



Make no mistake about it, this book is all about writing an e-commerce web site and little about teaching the reader PHP 5. That's ok for us hard-core developers, though, as the included PHP is so clean and so simple it won't be a problem for PHP novices.

The core of the book is about writing a web site to sell things. Early on the author introduces the handful of patterns that will be used (MVC, Registry, Singleton) then immediately provides a runnable skeleton MVC framework that handles only Products and Categories. After that, it's an incremental build chapter by chapter as the author adds features to the web site.

Without question, one of the book's strong suits is the author's knowledge of e-commerce features. The book covers all the features you're going to want (Search, Payment, Discounts and Vouchers, Recommendations, User Reviews, etc. etc.). Each of these is given adequate coverage and a clear implementation, chapter by chapter. The book ends with some tiny chapters on odds and ends like password recovery, calling out to other commerce sites, etc.

If you're looking for a PHP book, this isn't the title you want. There's simply nothing here (besides plenty of good, well commented source code) to teach you the language. But if you're looking to learn how to write an MVC application, there is value here.

I'd recommend this book to anyone that's building an e-commerce site. The author's care in enumerating the many features you'll want is valuable advice you can leverage.

PHP 5 e-commerce can be found here.