New to PHP with a purpose.

[kalanzar]

Greetings,
I am very new to PhP and just learning.  I have hit an educational impass.  I have picked up a few books on PhP and gone though some tutorials and have a grasp of operation, but there does not seem to be one resourse that shows the step by steps. 
I have picked up books like Sams Teach yourself and "visually teaches..".  What I am trying to do is create a php interface that would be a progressive decision tree with custom output. ( a trouble shooting device to seek out and limit issues until only one answer remains)

Can any tempered PhP users point me to a good educational reference?

Thank you in advance

~kalanzar

[Jessica]

It's PHP, not PhP.

Books are awful for learning programming languages. There are tons of great tutorials, but the best way is to just get started. Draw out a structure of how you think it should work, then start programming! When you run into errors, then we can help.

[pocobueno1388]

I actually found books to be very useful when I was learning...although it took a while for me to find the right book that was easiest to understand for me. That book ended up being "PHP programming for the absolute beginner" by Andy harris. I'm not sure if this will cover what you need to know or not.

Tutorials were also a big help as well. As Jesirose said, start programming and when you get stuck first look for a tutorial on what you need, then ask for help if you can't find something.

[SharkBait]

The books that I used and were step by step were the

[url=http://www.amazon.ca/PHP-World-Wide-Web-QuickStart/dp/0321245652/sr=8-1/qid=1169151680/ref=sr_1_1/702-8753918-7424024?ie=UTF8&s=books]PHP for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickStart Guide  [/url]

and

[url=http://www.amazon.ca/PHP-MySQL-Dynamic-Web-Sites/dp/0321336577/sr=8-1/qid=1169151729/ref=sr_1_1/702-8753918-7424024?ie=UTF8&s=books]PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide Quickstart Guide to PHP[/url]

They both provided real life uses for creating Dynamic websites in a step-by-step explaination. I love them have let friends borrow them to learn PHP and MySQL

[tarun]

im fairly new to PHP aswell but if you do searches on google you should be fine

for php help try [url=http://www.php.net]www.php.net[/url]

[Hypnos]

As far as references go, the PHP website is amazing. I use the [url=http://www.php.net/manual/en/funcref.php]function list[/url] there on a daily basis.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that books are "awful". I have about 4 advanced PHP books. They have helped me understand some of the more complex subjects, and often times have examples much better than those on websites. But I learned the PHP basics from websites, and trial and error.

I think that the more resources you have avalible, the better off you are. It also doesn't hurt to have something in dead tree format to study through when computer (or internet) access is not possible.

I never liked any of the "Learn X in Y hours" books. I've prefered the books from O'Reilly and the "Visual Quickstart Guide" series.


A "decision tree"? You will need to think of a way to store the questions (array or database. I would lean towards a database), and a way to save the question answered for that user, so that they carry over to the next page (session data or temp database entries).

[kalanzar]

Thank you for the input.  I will take the advice, put it on paper and start slinging code.  I learned HTML / XML / HTML from books, but it never really made sense until I started tearing apart other code to see how things worked.  I think that i may have been just a little overwhelmed by it.  But as I go though tutorials, it does not seem much harder than HTML (and MUCH easier than PERL). 

So - a -coding I will go.
Thank you so much for your suggestions.

~Kalanzar