jQuery 1.3 and PHP: Book review and Giveaway

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Combining both jQuery and PHP can be very powerful. One of my very popular articles called A fancy Apple.com-style search suggestion is combining these two techniques too, to achieve the desired effect. There are loads of tutorials on the net that also use both techniques, but Kae Verens wrote a complete book about it. The book is called jQuery 1.3 with PHP (by Packt Publishing) and shares great information on how you can combine jQuery and PHP for use on your own website.

I've read the book and wrote a review about it. Now, you have a chance to win this book and read it yourself!

What you'll learn from this book:

Integrate jQuery into your PHP applications
Manipulate images non-destructively
Create your own jQuery plugins
Use a drag/drop mechanism to sort lists and create hierarchical menus
and much more!.

Read the review below and make sure to check out how you can win a hardcopy version of this book. Also, make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed or follow me on Twitter to get updates on more future giveaways.

Table of Contents

There is a summary after each chapter, which reflects on what you've learned so far.

Preface
Chapter 1: Introduction and Overview
1. Expected developer skills
2. Differences between PHP and JavaScript
3. What is jQuery?
4. How does jQuery fit in with PHP?
5. How to work with the examples
6. Projects that use PHP and jQuery
Chapter 2: Quick Tricks
1. Dynamic select boxes
2. Quick deletes
3. Contextual help
4. Inline editing
Chapter 3: Tabs and Accordions
1. Using a jQuery tab plugin
2. Using jQuery accordion plugins
3. Server-side management of accordions
4. Server-side management of tabs
5. Using special codes to define tabs
6. Loading accordion panels through AJAX
7. Loading tab panels through AJAX
Chapter 4: Forms and Form Validation
1. Using the jQuery validation plugin
2. Setting up jQuery validation from PHP
3. Remote validation
4. Large select boxes
5. Auto-suggestion
Chapter 5: File Management
1. Security
2. Choosing a directory
3. Creating, renaming, and deleting directories
4. Moving directories
5. File uploads
6. Renaming, deleting, and moving files.
7. File downloads
Chapter 6: Calendars
1. Displaying the calendar
2. Creating an event
3. Loading events from the server
4. Moving and resizing events
5. Editing events
6. Deleting events
7. Walk-through of the calendar so far
8. Recurring events
9. Deleting recurring events
Chapter 7: Image Manipulation
1. Showing the list of images
2. Selecting an image
3. Preparing your PHP
4. Rotating
5. Caching or saving the image
6. Resizing
7. Cropping
Chapter 8: Drag and Drop
1. Sorting simple lists
2. Sorting trees
3. Connecting lists
Chapter 9: Data Tables
1. Setting up DataTables
2. Getting data from the server
3. Caching your database queries
4. Pagination through AJAX
5. Sorting by column
6. Filtering
7. Setting a delay on the filter
Chapter 10: Optimization
1. Optimizing the page load
2. Optimizing development and maintenance
3. Optimizing jQuery
4. JavaScript optimizations

Pictures

Review

The book aims to be a book for PHP application developers who want to improve their user interfaces through jQuery's capabilities and responsiveness. I really think the author has done a great job at achieving this goal. The code examples are very practical which can be used inside loads of websites. You don't especially need to be familiar with jQuery, since the book will provide you with numerous practical examples on how to improve your application. Through the code, you'll learn some great jQuery too!

I personally really liked reading chapter 7, where jQuery and PHP is combined to do some pretty neat image manipulation. I've never thought of doing this myself and the code examples show some great ways on achieving non-destructive image manipulations. I might try messing around and combining both to write a tutorial about it myself, it can really create some nice stuff. Also, the last chapter (Optimization) has been an eye opener on several subjects (so, even for some advanced jQuery/PHP developers this book can be a refreshing read).

This book is more aimed at programmers than designers, which you can really see in the examples. The UI is very basic, but the code behind it looks very good. Also, nothing about jQuery animation / CSS etc. is handled in this book; it really focuses on the combination of jQuery with PHP.

Furthermore, the code written is very clean, but not my personal style (but that's just a matter of taste). What I did like, is that there are comments placed in the code examples, which makes the code even more clear. A minor downside is that there isn't any CD combined with the book where you can see the code in colour and copy it (the eBook version does allow easy copying of the code).

The book is fairly easily written. It's not a boring book to read, no "fancy words" and it's written in a way most tutorials on the web are written. It looks as if the author is telling you how to do things, instead of only showing. An example: OK. Now, let's do some more manipulating tasks. Here's another simple one.

I really think this is a great book that you should have if you're a PHP developer that wants to use some very good use of jQuery on his website. A "must-have" on every bookshelf, one of the better jQuery books I've seen so far.

Giveaway

Now that you know all this information about jQuery 1.3 with PHP, I'm pretty sure you would love to add this book to your collection. Packt Publishing has kindly decided to provide one hardcopy version of this book to one lucky Marcofolio.net Reader!

During, this contest, we'll work with tokens. The more tokens you have, the greater the chance is of winning the actual book. But how to get a token?

Simply leave a comment

Dropping some kind words in the comment field, will provide you with one token.

Tweet about this giveaway on Twitter

One token will be provided to you if you tweet about this giveaway on Twitter.

Tweet about this giveaway on Twitter and leave a comment linking to your Twitter update!

The combination of both will give you not 2, but three tokens.

Example: If you leave a comment like this. I tweeted about this contest here http://twitter.com/marcofolio/status/7894547509 , it'll provide you three tokens which increases the chance of winning the book. It's that simple!

Don't forget to enter a valid e-mail address, otherwise I won't be able to contact you if you've won the prize. When the contest has finished, all valid entries will be entered on Random.org. The first one that will pop-up on top of the list will be announced as winner.

So participate now and who knows you could be the lucky winner!

Rules / Notes

Pack Publishing is only able to send this book to the UK, or countries in the US and Europe. If you live outside these countries, you'll receive the eBook version.
This contests ends on January 25th.
jQuery released version 1.4 of their library a couple of days ago, but all examples from this book still work (backward-compatible).

Good luck to everyone!

Update: Contest has finished

Small note to tell everybody that the contest has finished. I want to congratulate Demitra for winning the book!