This book is an essential guide to some of the best free add-ons to PHP. These add-ons, or tools, provide invaluable functionality for improving your PHP web applications, including accessing databases, generating robust Web forms, using page templating systems, creating and parsing XML documents, authenticating users, and much more.

In response to the existing shortage of documentation about the tools, author David Sklar packs this book with details about installing, configuring, and using each tool-along with plenty of examples tailored to PHP 4 and 5.

Sklar also lays out the details of Auth and HTML_QuickFormtwo hard working PEAR modules, so you don't have to code your own authentication system or Web form construction set! Also included are chapters on debugging programs, and increasing Web server speed. In short, you will learn to eliminate inefficiencies in PHP, and enhance performance without any code modification.

PHP Toolbox explains how to use popular PEAR modules and PHP add-ons to simplify your XML processing, database access, templating, and other common tasks. It also explains how to use a PHP code cache or optimizer, which speeds up your code without requiring any rewriting or code changes.

From the reviews:

"This book intends to simplify programming tasks through the use ? . The intended audience is intermediate-to-advanced, although I believe it is also of great use to the uninitiated. The Introduction provides a solid introduction to the use of PEAR ? . The section on databases is required reading for anyone wishing to ? . The Smarty chapter is an excellent introduction into templating ? . Especially enjoyable is the chapter on PEAR's Mail_mime ? . I particularly enjoyed the level of detail given ? ." (Mitchell Pirtle, International PHP Magazine, Issue no. 4, 2004)