heavydog

When I read that this book was written by a ‘director of specialised management consultancy’, I took a sharp intake of breath. How can someone who isn’t a developer write a book about a subject as in-depth as a PHP framework? Surely he’ll miss the point? At least he’ll miss out pertinant information about how the framework functions? It’s core? You need a larger understanding of OO PHP and frameworks to make the best use of CI, no? He’ll fail to explain the concept of MVC well enough to the novice developers this book is aimed won’t he?

I was right.

David Upton has written a book that falls short of appealing to the hardcore PHP developer market who would be interested in a book about CI frameworks and has over-reached when it comes to trying to explain how to create a basic website with what is possibly one of the most powerful frameworks available. On a few occasions he outright insults and belittles those readers who actually use and understand the intricases of PHP by referring to them as ‘geeks’ from the first chapter.

Claims like CI saving you time and reducing the amount you code, thus making the site faster, are misleading if you only want a simple brochureware site with a contact form and a means to include a common set of elements on each page. Of course, he is perfectly correct if you want to write a web application — but who is this book aimed at?

There are some good chapters in this book though, ‘Code Igniter and Objects’ is a more high-brow look at how CI actually functions, for the most part it’s well written, but it occasionally glosses over points that need expanding — the section on namespaces comes to mind. ‘Production Versions, Updates and Big Decisions’ is another good chapter, although this wouldn’t be anything new to a long-in-the-tooth developer. Finally ‘Resources and Extensions’ is a good overview of some of the better extensions and add-ons available for CI.

Overall, this book will only satisfy the needs of a very niche group of developers. Those who either know about PHP, OO and frameworks but have never laid eyes on CI, or those whose needs are basic and need a framework because it will save time in the short term, this brings about issues of whether CI is neccessary for those with only basic needs however.

The books biggest shortcoming is it doesn’t really show you anything that User Guide hasn’t already explained in detail, or that the forum can provide with a brief search and they’re both free. It misses out one of the most poweful tools in the CI kitbag, Hooks, and that is unforgivable. This is, however, the only book about CI. So if you’re after something to read away from the computer, then it might be worth chance, otherwise, visit the CI website where you can find all that’s in the book and more.