On the PHPWomen blog today there's a new book review of SitePoint's latest major PHP publication - "PHP Master" (by Lorna Mitchell, Davey Shafik and Matthew Turland).

At 357 pages (375 including index), this book provides a thorough grounding in the key topics todays PHP developer should strive to know, and know well. The back cover ambitiously states that the book is "guaranteed to take your PHP skills to the next level". Keep reading to find out whether or not I agree.

She walks you through the contents of the book, noting that, despite her being an experienced developer, there were still things that she found new.

Despite the stated demographic, I think this book has a lot to offer novice developers. It would be a real challenge to properly digest and understand the wide range of topics covered, but an achievable and worthwhile one nonetheless. [...] If you're still undecided, my advice is buy the book - you won't regret it.

As is mentioned in this new post to the SitePoint blogs, a new book has been released (by SitePoint press, naturally) about "writing cutting-edge PHP code" by a few well known authors in the PHP community - Lorna Mitchell, Davey Shafik and Matthew Turland.

Savvy PHP web developers can now keep ahead of the game and ensure that their PHP code is safe, secure, and well-structured for the future with the latest release from SitePoint: "PHP Master: Write Cutting-edge Code" by Lorna Mitchell, Davey Shafik, and Matthew Turland.

The book covers a wide range of topics (somewhat replacing SitePoint's usual "anthology" type of book) including:

• An introduction to OOP
• Working with databases
• Creating and working with APIs
• Design patterns
• Security
• Automated testing

As part of a special offer, you can pick up your print+ebook bundle for the price of just the book, about $40 USD. If you'd like a sample before purchasing, they've posted three sample chapters.

The Zend Developer Zone has posted their latest episode in their PHP Abstract podcast series today - an advanced look at using APIs in PHP from Davey Shafik.

Today's special guest is Davey Shafik. Davey Shafik is a full time developer with 10 years experience in PHP and related technologies. He is an author of both books and magazines and no stranger to the regular listeners of PHP Abstract. Today, Davey is going to talk to take an advanced look at APIs.

You can grab this latest bit of PHP audio goodness three ways - from the on-page player, via a subscription to the podcast feed or just by downloading the mp3.

The Zend Developer Zone has published the latest podcast in their PHP Abstract series today - an episode hosted by Davey Shafik talking about web services in PHP.

Today's special guest is Davey Shafik. Davey is a regular on PHP Abstract and I've receited his bio enough so that those of you who listen regularly can probably recite along with me. [...] Today Davey is going to talk to us today about Web Services.

As always, you can either pull down the mp3 by itself and listen to the show right away (or use the embedded player for that matter) or you can subscribe to the feed and get this and other great episodes (including a previous vidcast from Davey) delivered right to your desktop.

The Zend Developer Zone has posted episode eighteen of their PHP Abstract podcast series - another episode from Davey Shafik. This time he goes on an "API rant".

Todays special guest is Davey Shafik. If you are a regular listener of PHP Abstract, you will recognize Davey's name from previous podcasts. For those of you new to PHP Abstract, Davey is a full time PHP Developer with 10 years experience in PHP and related technologies. He is an author of both magazine articles and books. Davey keeps his mind sharp by trying to tackle problems from his unique perspective. Today, Davey is going to rant a bit about APIs.

The show can either be downloaded directly, listen to the show via the built-in web player, or you can subscribe to the podcast's feed to get this and more great content from PHP Abstract.

The #php.thinktank channel on the Freenode IRC network has started their talk series with two new topics, the logs for which have been posted to the thinktank website.

The two topics so far have been:

• SLP by Davey Shafik
• php.NET (phalanger) by zaemis