I’m sorry, but when you spend more time troubleshooting typos from the book than learning Yii you’ve got a problem. Trying to learn from this book is brutal. I love Yii and its capabilities. But the author should take the time to do things right, which he obviously didn’t. I’ve decided to cut my losses with this book and try something else. ANYTHING must be better than this. Seriously…
Yea, I’ve read almoust the whole thing through and I got to agree that speending so much time troubleshooting for a problem could be challenging…also some of the parts of the book are kinda blurry, so if you are beginer you gonna have alot of trouble reading it(especcialy with so many bugs)…
also I dont like how author at first takes it sloooow and steady…and at the end he pace’ it up…but in overall I like the structure of the book(reading it its like playing with lego’s, and at the end when you assemble all of the lego’s you get nice app for you and your team to use ), hopefully next edition’s of the book should fix the current agony of reading the book.
i wish they would update the Book’s PDF version.
I can understand not doing this to the printed copy.
I’ve contacted PACKT. Let’s see what we can do in order to update it.
Strength in numbers. Maybe if we get a partition together.
Hi samdark,
please update us what decision has been taken by writer of this book?
or still they want to wait for Yii 2.0?
OK.
I am certainly sorry to hear of some of the struggles people are having when attempting to learn Yii using this book.
Being the author of this book, I can let you know that is it not my decision as to whether or not to provide revisions under PackT publishing. It is a decision they will have to make first, and then they would solicit interested parties to write subsequent revisions.
The number of printed typos in the book is certainly unfortunate. Many people also are not using the same older versions of software (the final drafts of this book were submitted over 1.5 years ago) and mistake differences in the versions as book errors. However, there are typos that were printed in the book that were not even part of final drafts submitted. I 100% agree that these could and should be fixed and could be done quickly in the PDF version of the book. I will update this thread if PackT decides to allow any revisions to be made.
In the meantime, I would encourage readers to download the codebase and use the downloaded version as the code reference as they work their way through the chapters, rather than attempting to cut and paste from the printed version. Also, the book (in most places) is making an attempt to use non-DB server specific DDL statements, whereas the download-able code is using MySQL specific statements (which is more straight-forward and easier to understand…trying to keep the DDL statements non-MySQL specific, and then being inconsistent with that, is something I would not do again if making revisions)
You can get the codebase on github: https://github.com/jefftulsa/TrackStar
I will spend some time soon working to bring this codebase up to the most recent stable version of Yii, which might also help with some of the issues readers are having when trying to follow along.
I just want to say I’ve been very happy with this book so far (i’m a little over half way through). I had very little Yii background before reading it and it has cleared a lot of things up for me. I probably won’t finish the rest as I feel like I have a good enough grasp to get started on my project, but will definitely use it for reference. (I wish there wasn’t so much ‘testing’ going on in the book, but i appreciate being introduced to it)
Hi Jefftulsa;
first congrats to provide this book.
and thanks to update this forum about your decisions.
Although I’ve seen a few people recommend this book, there are way too many references on various book sites and here regarding typographical errors and outright code errors that will preclude me from buying it. Just sayin … I’ve been that route before with Java – I bought six books on that before I found one that 1) didn’t suck and 2) was not bloated with errata.
The pickin’s are slim for Yii books but I guess I’ll stick with the Cookbook and Definitive guide because few things are more frustrating than depending on a source to teach you something new when that source has numerous issues and errors.
As far as downloading the code base, is all the code there? I can’t tell from comparing it with the TOC.
I really like this book and it´s good to hear that there will be a second edition soon:
jefftulsa,
Thanks for replying to others here regarding the errors in the book.
I started the book, loved it at the start then gave up around page 120 when I just couldn’t be bothered trying to fathom why something (yet another thing) wouldn’t work.
I dont want this response to you to be negative as the book itself just seems so promising. I say "seems", as I am sure the next addition will address the issues raised. I started learning ZEND as my first MVC and I just gave up because I found all the documentation on it to be just like the framework - massive, bloated and confusing. I never doubted my ability to learn ZEND, I just gave up as the documentation tended to be horrible and the community offered little or no response to fairly reasonable questions.
Yii and your book (or at least your vision for the book) are the opposite - free from bloat, practical and well documented. It’s just that the book contained so many errors it was more trouble than it was worth, even to those who already understood advanced PHP and MVC concepts.
I really, really hope you don’t take the negative feedback from myself and others too badly. I think the overall opinion of the book is that it is an excellent idea, badly executed (possibly from haste?), and that is where our frustration comes from. I am sure you will address the issues in the next addition and do the original idea justice.
Ally the best,
U4EA