If you are actually looking for a vampire novel, put this book back on the shelf. Immediately. If you are a hard-core Assembler programmer who needs no web interfaces at all, you might not be interested, either. However, if you are involved in some kind of web development, you will probably find this book useful. It is thick and heavy enough to cover a wide range of topics and provide various perspectives for all kinds of readers:

There are many great tutorials and books on each of the frameworks covered in this book. What makes this book unique is the comparative approach we've adopted. We wanted to do more than just present three advanced technologies — we wanted to point out their advantages and disadvantages by comparing how each solves certain problems. This gives you a very practical tutorial-like experience and a solid base for more advanced discussion. It allows you to formulate your own views on PHP web frameworks and their suitability for your needs.

Flame wars are a hallmark of all discussions about web frameworks. Everyone has a favorite and tries to promote it against all others. The problem is that all web frameworks are used for the same purpose, but have different internal structures. Knowing one of them is generally enough to produce web applications, so there are few people interested in mastering multiple tools of this kind. This makes comparisons difficult. No wonder many discussions are based on stereotypes, personal opinions, and unverified data.

In this situation, many unanswered questions arise: Which framework is best suited for my particular purpose? Which one is the quickest to learn? Which one produces applications the fastest? Which one has the richest features? Which one will I like best? Is there one that surpasses all the others? We have asked these questions ourselves and found no reliable answers. However, because these questions are often asked by other developers, we decided to do our best to find the solution and then share it in this book. The results were often really surprising.

The main principle of this book is to show how to do some tasks in each framework (in parallel wherever possible). To accomplish this, each example is repeated for each framework. Sometimes the solutions are really similar in order to make all subtle differences easily visible, but sometimes one framework provides a unique solution, in which case we are not afraid to use it. The book is divided into four parts that will gradually introduce you to the complexities of PHP frameworks. More experienced developers can freely skip the first part or read only the chapters they need.

The source code presented in this book is designed to illustrate technologies described in the chapters in which it appears. Consistent with the idea that you should be able to freely read the code, not figure it out, the snippets are as simple and informative as possible. We didn't aim to print full listings of all files in the book.

However, we wouldn't leave you without full working applications. They can be downloaded from the Wrox website at www.wrox.com or from a dedicated website maintained by us at www.phpframeworks.org. The advantages of this approach are that we can put all needed files in one convenient downloadable packet. What is even more important is that you can adapt the examples to newer versions of the rapidly evolving frameworks.

To find the source code at the Wrox website, simply locate the book's title (use the Search box or one of the title lists) and click the Download Code link on the book details page to obtain all the source code for the book. Code that is included on the website is highlighted in this book by the following icon:

You'll find the filename in a code note such as this:

Once you download the code, just decompress it with your favorite compression tool. Alternately, you can go to the main Wrox code download page at www.wrox.com/dynamic/books/download.aspx to see the code available for this book and all other Wrox books.

Conventions used in this book are pretty intuitive and straightforward. In order to distinguish inline source code from normal text, we are using a monospace font. The same applies to filenames and directories. Names of variables are additionally italicized (unless they appear in code snippets or listings, where they are not italicized). Names of all methods and functions have parentheses at the end in order to make more visible that they are methods; however, their arguments are usually omitted and the parentheses are empty, as in this ExampleMethod(). URLs are monospace_and_underlined.

Snippets of code look like this:

$ zf create model AddressBook

Italic font is used in multiple contexts:

In the whole book, "Symfony" is always capitalized, like any other specific name, even when referring to 1.x versions, which were called "symfony." It not only appeals to our aesthetic sense but it is also much easier to find in dense text this way.

We have worked hard to make this book approachable, informative, and bug-free. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know. Also, if you find an error, you would do us a favor by telling us about it. More general info about this book, the authors, and an up-to-date list of errata can be found on our website at www.phpframeworks.org.

Also, if you ever wish to buy us a drink for job well done or insult us for massive incompetence, feel free to write us at web-frameworks-book@googlegroups.com.

Contact info for individual authors for more intimate proposals:

Figure 1. The authors (from left): Bartosz Porębski, Karol Przystalski and Leszek Nowak.

We make every effort to ensure that there are no errors in the text or in the code. However, no one is perfect, and mistakes do occur. If you find an error in one of our books, like a spelling mistake or faulty piece of code, we would be very grateful for your feedback. By sending in errata, you might save another reader hours of frustration, and at the same time, you will be helping us provide even higher-quality information.

To find the errata page for this book, go to http://www.wrox.com and locate the title using the Search box or one of the title lists. Then, on the book details page, click the Book Errata link. On this page, you can view all errata that have been submitted for this book and posted by Wrox editors. A complete book list, including links to each book's errata, is also available at www.wrox.com/misc-pages/booklist.shtml.

If you don't spot "your" error on the Book Errata page, go to www.wrox.com/contact/techsupport.shtml and complete the form there to send us the error you have found. We'll check the information and, if appropriate, post a message to the book's errata page and fix the problem in subsequent editions of the book.

For author and peer discussion, join the P2P forums at p2p.wrox.com. The forums are a web-based system for you to post messages relating to Wrox books and related technologies and interact with other readers and technology users. The forums offer a subscription feature to e-mail you topics of interest of your choosing when new posts are made to the forums. Wrox authors, editors, other industry experts, and your fellow readers are present on these forums.

At http://p2p.wrox.com, you will find a number of different forums that will help you, not only as you read this book, but also as you develop your own applications. To join the forums, just follow these steps:

Once you join, you can post new messages and respond to messages other users post. You can read messages at any time on the Web. If you would like to have new messages from a particular forum e-mailed to you, click the Subscribe to this Forum icon by the forum name in the forum listing.

For more information about how to use the Wrox P2P, be sure to read the P2P FAQs for answers to questions about how the forum software works, as well as many common questions specific to P2P and Wrox books. To read the FAQs, click the FAQ link on any P2P page.