Essential PHP Security

…how I worked my way from basic PHP security to advanced web application security (language-independent). I am sure it will help you in making a decision for yourself. 1. Essential PHP Security by Chris Shiflett: a light read with little over 100 pages. PHP often picks a lot of flak for being insecure. However, in majority of cases its not because of the flaws in PHP platform itself. It’s because of the certain design choices PHP made which makes it easier for a novice developer to mistakenly write insecure code. Given a little care, these mistakes can be easily avoided. All basic security stuffs are covered like forms and urls, sql injection, session and cookie security. The concept covered in this book can easily be applied for other platforms but apparently you don’t want any of these information because you already are well-versed in t…

… something to consider being relatively close by. I'm bookish in how I approach programming too, and among your list have read "PHP & MySQL Web Development," Shiflett's "Essential PHP Security," and "Advanced PHP Programming" when I was first starting out (I started out as a PHP programmer). If you're anything like me, the books get less exciting as the knowledge they contain gets more familiar, which is inevitable among a certain class of books. I now read more language agnostic books on algorithms, math, and some broader concepts. We'll see how that goes. Sara Goleman has a book on writing extensions for PHP that you might like if you want to 'cross the threshold.' These sorts of things can be useful to know how it all works internally, even if you aren't writing a ton of extensions yourself. The Schlossnagle book has a chapter on that.…

I'm a bookworm, so I sought out well-regarded books on Amazon. I started with 'PHP and MySQL Web Development' by Welling & Thomson, and could not have been happier. It's hefty (nearly 1,000 pages for the latest edition), but was well worth the time. Next up was 'PHP in Action', which is similar to the later chapters in Mark Pilgrim's Dive Into Python (one hell of a book, btw) and was coauthored by Chris Shiflett. I've since read two of Ullman's books (PHP for the WWW and PHP 5 Advanced), the Powers books (PHP Solutions and PHP Object-Oriented Solutions), and Shiflett's 'Essential PHP Security' (the PHPSec guide is required reading also). The two Apress Pro books ('PHP Objects, Patterns and Practice' and 'Pro PHP'), 'Essential PHP Tools', 'PHP5 Power Programming' (Andi Gutmans is a coauthor) and 'Advanced PHP Programming' by Schlossnagle a…