cakephp

Practical CakePHP Projects (Practical Projects)
$42.99
When I got my hands on this book to learn cakePHP , I was pretty excited to start learning a new framework - but I was completely disappointed while going through the first 2 chapters, I did read a couple of more chapters, but honestly could not finish reading/practicing from this book and learning anything concrete

(1) The book is choppy and completely disorganized - the author goes into various tangents without any contexts. Example, in the very first chapter, he goes about explaining cake database configuration class without even getting into some simple fundamentals of cakePHP.
(2) No clear demarcation between standard PHP and cakePHP - this make it very confusing in either way - if you are coming from a PHP background or even if you are a novice.

Stay away from this book. Try the 'Cake PHP application development' by Ahsanul Bari and Anupom Syam - I am right now half way through and finding it much much better than this book.

The Definitive Guide to symfony
$44.99
I ordered this book to serve as a reference for my symfony work. It has been an excellent reference guide to symfony, though it is not meant to be a "Introduction to.." or "Getting Started" book. I highly recommend if you work or have a solid background in symfony and need a handy desktop reference manual.

Beginning CakePHP: From Novice to Professional
$42.99
I have read many books on programming over the past few years, and this is one of the worst ones, simply because of the way it is written.

The text manages to be extremely dense and yet, at the same time, does not contain much useful information. Examples are not well explained, major concepts fail to be presented in a clear and concise matter. And certain things, which get explained in great detail still do not make sense.

I am half way through the book, and it has been a grueling experience.

Practical Web 2.0 Applications with PHP
$44.99
This book has great examples, and great explanation of the code. I can't remember getting as much mileage out of a tech book before.
I particularly liked the intro to the Zend Framework and Prototype/Scriptaculous. I was very, very impressed.