I skimmed through this book once, and I read the reviews here. I thought this book could not have been that bad. It is a well structured book (from reading the Titles and SubTitles). Then I started reading it in details - lucky I borrowed this book from the library.
This book started off so well. It promises "best practices", yet delivers very bad coding habits and taking shortcuts. The book outlines and titles were well designed, but the details were nothing more than, "Hay, here is the syntax, this is the usage plus some simple examples..., and you can use this to design database." Nothing that I couldn't find from the online PHP manual, and probably with better examples. Functions and keywords used were never explained properly. Its like, "Kid, now that I taught you addition, multiplication, subtraction and division.... You should be able to go out and solve the 2nd law of Thermodynamics because all mathematics built upon plus and minus."
Not only that you can't do "Everything" reading this book, having read it I think I know less PHP.
This book reflect badly on the publisher as well, I'd think twice buying similar book from them.