I was taught C programming in college, but quickly moved onto PHP for web application developing. Now an expert using the power of PHP, I realize there are times writing an extention, instead of writing a gastly workaround with PHP, will help my software be faster or more scalable. Having forgotten most of what I learned in college, my C skills are rusty. I picked up Blake Schwendiman's book and dug in. It was easy to follow, I was surprised at how easy it was to write a basic PHP extention. For me, the book was a perfect re-introduction to the world of C programming. And now I have a new tool for the toolset, thanks, Mr. Schwendiman!

Building Custom PHP Extensions is everything I hoped it would be, and then some. This is knowledge concentrate at its best.
Since I prefer to read documentation on-screen, I'm exclusively using the PDF version. If I should point out anything that would make this publication absolutely perfect, it would be adding the table of contents as a bookmark structure in the PDF, similar to what has been done with the actual PHP Manual. This would save a tremendous amount of time when jumping back and forth between chapters.

If you ever want or have to build your own PHP extension, there's only one serious recommendation: read this book!
It's well written, the examples are easy to use and it's just fun working with it. Building your own extension has never been that easy.
This book saved me weeks of research in bad commented source codes. Thanks!

This is the greatest resource for php programing and examples. Easy to follow with great straight forward examples.

I can't believe I write a review! (I NEVER do this)

I was happily surprised! For such a reasonable price, I got solid information to make customize extensions easy to excrete.

Don't plan on building any custom extensions for PHP without this book. I wouldn't have even known where to start, let alone how to build extensions correctly, without it. The examples are awesome and the text is very well written and organized. Rock on!