good book about PHP with good exercises

Question

Is there any book about modern PHP (like 5.2 + mysqli or PDO) for beginners with good exercises (for ex., good exercises are in "Learning Perl", which is one of the best books for beginners)?

P.S. (considering some answers I got on IRC): it should not be a tutorial, it should not be a video tutorial, it should not be outdated (like using outdated 'mysql' extension), it should contain exercises.

Answer 1

link : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/86103/books-and-tutorials-for-beginners-in-java-and-php

These threads should get you started:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3088/best-ways-to-teach-a-beginner-to-program

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4769/easiest-language-to-start-with

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22873/language-bookstutorials-for-popular-languages

Answer 2

I just went through wrox' PHP6, Apache, MySQL. Very nice book, which takes you through the process of creating 2 different projects.

Answer 3

O'Reilly's Learning PHP 5

The book begins with an introduction to PHP, then moves to more advanced features: language basics, arrays and functions, web forms, connecting to databases, and much more. Complete with exercises to make sure the lessons stick, this book offers the ideal classroom learning experience whether you're in a classroom or on your own.

Answer 4

Just a note, if you intend to use a particular framework, you may want to check out books on those frameworks first then move on to read more on PHP language itself. This could help you get started with creating something quickly as you dabble more with the language itself.