As the first book to come out on CakePHP, there was a lot of pressure on this title to be really strong. On the whole, it has pretty good coverage of the topic, but the flow of the title is undermined by shoddy editing.
= The Good =
This title is a pretty decent introduction to CakePHP. Coming from a background in PHP and having worked with Ruby on Rails for a few years as well, I think the authors did a good job covering the basics and putting together some interesting projects for you to work on.
= The Bad =
As a technical editor for several books myself, I know how difficult it is to catch all of the mistakes (missing semicolons and the like), but the level of technical errors in this book was shocking. One simple example: the minLength validation option was misspelled everywhere (as "minLenght") -- in code examples, in body copy, etc. And that's just one example. It's obvious that the examples in this book were not thoroughly vetted despite having 2 reviewers and 2 technical editors. Sure, maybe I'm nitpicking, but I feel strongly that when a technical book comes out, it needs to be as accurate as possible to reduce the frustration level of people following our examples line-by-line.
Another minor gripe I have with the book is the incredibly inconsistent formatting of the code examples. Indents were all over the place, as were line wraps, making it very difficult to follow. I understand that some people don't care about nice-looking code, but when you are supplying that code for an educational purpose, it should be as legible as possible.
= The Ugly =
For the most part, I enjoyed this book, but the section on JavaScript and Ajax made me wince. Repeatedly.
As someone who spends a lot of time teaching people how to write unobtrusive JavaScript, it pains me to see books that continue to promote doing things the wrong way. I'll give the author's props for relegating most of their JavaScript to external files, but their Ajax examples leave no fallback for users with JavaScript turned off (or no JavaScript support). It would have taken just a few more lines to show how it could be done using progressive enhancement techniques like Hijax (discussed in Jeremy Keith's book Bulletproof Ajax).
One final gripe I have with this title is that it completely skips over the topic of unit testing. The section on working with the Cake shell briefly mentions it (by simply having you decline the offer to have the shell script generate test cases for you). After seeing that, I was hoping the authors would at least devote a small chapter to provide a cursory overview of building and using unit tests in Cake. Alas, that chapter never materialized.
= Final thoughts =
In all, the book was decent, but didn't really blow me away. It could have been a lot better.
Amazon4星半优秀图书，cakephp入门必看！
Product Description
CakePHP is a leading PHP–based web app development framework. When asking a question on forums or chat rooms, many CakePHP beginners get little help from the experts. Simple questions can get a response like, “Well, just read the online manual and API.” Unfortunately, the online manual is depreciated, and who wants to absorb a programming language or framework from an API? Beginning CakePHP will do the following:
Leads you from a basic setup of CakePHP to building a couple applications that will highlight CakePHP’s functionality and capabilities without delving too deeply into the PHP language, but rather what the CakePHP framework can offer the developer.
Teaches you to use CakePHP by incorporating advanced features into your web development projects.
Targets beginners of CakePHP or web frameworks in general as well as experienced developers with limited exposure to CakePHP. A secondary audience may include developers undecided on adopting CakePHP or business managers trying to assess the value of incorporating CakePHP into their toolbox.
What you’ll learn
Install and configure the CakePHP web framework.
Create your first CakePHP web application: to–do lists.
Progress by building a more complex blogging application.
Incorporate Ajax and Web 2.0 principles and techniques into your blogging and other CakePHP applications.
Apply these sample applications along with advanced techniques as a framework or template for building your own web applications with CakePHP going forward.
