Product Description

Zend's new PHP 5 Certification Exam represent an excellent tool for professional PHP developers who want to distinguish themselves in their field. php|architect's Zend PHP 5 Certification Study Guide, edited and produced by the publishers of php|architect magazine, provides the most comprehensive and thorough preparation tool for developers who wish to take the exam. This book provides complete coverage of every topic that is part of the exam, including: ? PHP Basics ? Functions ? Arrays ? Strings and Patterns ? Web Programming ? Object Oriented Programming ? Database Programming ? Object-oriented Design ? XML and Web Services ? Security ? Streams and Network Programming ? Differences Between PHP 4 and 5 Written by PHP professionals and Zend Certified PHP 5 Engineers Davey Shafik and Ben Ramsey, and reviewed by core PHP developer Derick Rethans, this is the perfect book for every prospective Zend Certified PHP Engineer candidate!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #132843 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-05
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 292 pages

Customer Reviews

Light Outline
While there were a few perspectives that some might not have noticed or thought about. For the most part, this was pretty light weight compared to the practice exams. If you have been working in the language and keeping up with the world, you should have at least seen most of this before. I would not rely on it for more than a detailed outline of some of what you need to know cold - - - at least for the practice exams. Perhaps I will be surprised by the actual exam, and find that this is exactly what is needed - - - who knows.

A Waste
One can easily argue that the certification exam itself is a waste of money, but with this book and its associated practice exams, the case is a little more cut-and-dry.

Want to pass the exam? Know the following things:

1. What can and can't go in a function/variable name.

2. What typehints are, how they work, and where they're applied.

3. What all of the array_*() functions do. The more verbose array_*_*() functions which nobody uses can be safely skipped over.

4. How to use the SimpleXML library in a very general way i.e. access elements, attributes and convert to DOM.

5. Everything about the new object model, including abstract and final classes, the new constructor format, destructors, autoloaders and access specifiers (public, private, protected).

6. How and when to pass by reference.

7. When things go out of scope.

8. What the following php.ini directives do: allow_url_fopen, register_globals, enable_dl, disable_functions.

9. What goes in the superglobals and when ($_SERVER, $_GET, $_POST, $_REQUEST, $_ARGV).

10. What all of the bitwise operators do (you should also be able to convert numbers to and from decimal, octal, hexadecimal and binary notation with nothing but your brain and a piece of scratch paper).

Database topics are covered, but you generally don't have to know any of the nonsense about mysqli or PDO--these things are all too buggy to actually use anyway, so learning about them is doubly pointless. If you can memorize function argument lists, do so with the preg_ and various string functions, because they like to throw some curveballs that use the optional args no one ever thinks about. If you can't, then don't bother because you can usually eliminate at least two of the choices they give you right off the bat and guess your way through the rest.

And please, please, please, leave comments on the questions that have misspelled words. They really need to fix that if they're going to charge $125 for a test.

I passed!
I took the test and passed :) (I think that says it all ;-) )

I studied the book along with the PHP help in order to digg a little more on the functions. I also bought the online practice test to see which areas I needed to focus on.

I liked the book, easy to understand/read.