Calling All Zend Certified Professionals For A lil Guidance

I ve checked zend official site and have read a couple of chapters of their official study guide, but when it comes to solving the practice questions, i find myself a total PHP ignorant. the questions are much more complex and not covered well in the study guide

My php proficiency is kinda "beginner"

Can you please tell me the right path way to become Zend PHP certified by tell me;

1) best php book to read which covers all the complex questions zend might ask me in the examination (if its available at amazon that would be fantastic)

2) any good online resource to practice for such questions.

3) any good video tutorials.

I would appreciate any help in this regard

 

http://www.phparch.com/c/books/id/0973862149 - This is a decent book to help study for it. It's a little expensive, but I think it is one of the best reference books, nothing extra though.

Zend also offers practice exams - http://www.zend.com/en/store/php-certification/online-practice-testing.

They're not free but you can buy a few and get a good idea of what you're going to run into on the test. They change the test fairly often, so I'm not sure what would be the best to study for right now. OOP is going to be very prominent. Possibly some php6 or even 5.3 upcoming changes (ereg, register_globals, safe_mode going away, etc...). They also throw a bunch of wild-card crap in that you rarely run into if I remember correctly. Bitwise functions are something that are usually on there. Know what different string formats are available, heredoc, etc. Definitely have a firm grasp of functions, operators, control, etc... Some of the tests are significantly more difficult than others, so you should definitely have a solid grasp before taking the real test. It's a lot like a higher-level college test: barely anything that you use in practice is on there

 

thanks for the nice quick reply jestep. the book you mentioned is just what I was talking about. Its not as indepth as it should be. I mean it doesnt thoroughly cover the exam questions. but i now feel that its the only option I have.

anybody else?