Appropriate for courses in PHP programming at all levels, beginning through advanced.This is the definitive programmers guide to PHP 5, the most popular Web programming language-now massively updated and more powerful than ever. While other books focus on not-quite-stable betas, PHP Unleashed thoroughly and authoritatively covers the final, official release of PHP 5. Author John Coggeshall is a recognized expert in the PHP community. A long-time PHP programmer, he writes the regular Code Gallery Spotlight column at Zend.com, which examines and illuminates complex PHP code for experienced programmers. Coggeshall begins this book with the fundamentals of PHP Web development, including file system manipulation, strings, arrays, regular expressions, Forms, sessions, cookies, and more. In Section I, he also introduces major improvements to PHP object-oriented programming, as well as PHP templates. The book contains a comprehensive section on working with data in PHP, including detailed chapters on accessing remote data, XML parsing, SOAP, and XSLT. Coggeshall next turns to creating graphical output, covering images, PDF files, and PHP-based GUI design. As students increasingly gain mastery with PHP, they will find detailed coverage of its most powerful features, including advanced email support; security and user authentication; wireless development; even PHPs Microsoft COM interface.