Chapt. 04 Pages 124-126 Errata

Andrew M. · December 30th, 2009, 02:53 AM

These "Try It Out" exercises are VERY confusing.

First thing was that it was hard to understand that all of these "Try It Out"s were in order and a part of a single file. Next was the lack of consistant coding that was revieled to me when I downloaded the zip file for all of the code in this book. The code from the downloaded files were not the same as the code in the book. IE the following:

From Downloaded File:table3.php

Code:

$query = "SELECT
     movie_id,
     movie_name,
     movie_director,
     movie_leadactor
     FROM
     movie";

From Book: table3.php

Code:

$query = "SELECT movie_id, movie_name, " .
             "movie_director, movie_leadactor " .
             "FROM movie";

From Downloaded file:movie_details.php

Code:

//get director's name from people table
     get_director($movie_director);

     //get lead actor's name from people table
     get_leadactor($movie_leadactor);

From Book:movie_details.php

Code:

//get director's name from people table
     get_director();

     //get lead actor's name from people table
     get_leadactor();

It took me days to figure this out. This book is supposed to be for BEGINNERS. BEGINNERS don't know how PHP code works. That in the last example listed above, the values $movie_director and $movie_leadactor needed to be inside each of the (). Major waste of time...