Building a Web Application with PHP and MariaDB: A Reference Guide. Build fast, secure, and interactive web applications using this comprehensive guide

Sai S Sriparasa

Building Agentic AI Systems. Create intelligent, autonomous AI agents that can reason, plan, and adapt

Anjanava Biswas, Wrick Talukdar, Matthew R. Scott, Dr. Alex Acero

Gain unparalleled insights into the future of AI autonomy with this comprehensive guide to designing and deploying autonomous AI agents that leverage generative AI (GenAI) to plan, reason, and act. Written by industry-leading AI architects and recognized experts shaping global AI standards and building real-world enterprise AI solutions, it explores the fundamentals of agentic systems, detailing how AI agents operate independently, make decisions, and leverage tools to accomplish complex tasks.Starting with the foundations of GenAI and agentic architectures, you’ll explore decision-making frameworks, self-improvement mechanisms, and adaptability. The book covers advanced design techniques, such as multi-step planning, tool integration, and the coordinator, worker, and delegator approach for scalable AI agents.Beyond design, it addresses critical aspects of trust, safety, and ethics, ensuring AI systems align with human values and operate transparently. Real-world applications illustrate how agentic AI transforms industries such as automation, finance, and healthcare. With deep insights into AI frameworks, prompt engineering, and multi-agent collaboration, this book equips you to build next-generation adaptive, scalable AI agents that go beyond simple task execution and act with minimal human intervention.

Building AI Applications with ChatGPT APIs. Master ChatGPT, Whisper, and DALL-E APIs by building ten innovative AI projects

Martin Yanev

Combining ChatGPT APIs with Python opens doors to building extraordinary AI applications. By leveraging these APIs, you can focus on the application logic and user experience, while ChatGPT’s robust NLP capabilities handle the intricacies of human-like text understanding and generation.This book is a guide for beginners to master the ChatGPT, Whisper, and DALL-E APIs by building ten innovative AI projects. These projects offer practical experience in integrating ChatGPT with frameworks and tools such as Flask, Django, Microsoft Office APIs, and PyQt.Throughout this book, you’ll get to grips with performing NLP tasks, building a ChatGPT clone, and creating an AI-driven code bug fixing SaaS application. You’ll also cover speech recognition, text-to-speech functionalities, language translation, and generation of email replies and PowerPoint presentations. This book teaches you how to fine-tune ChatGPT and generate AI art using DALL-E APIs, and then offers insights into selling your apps by integrating ChatGPT API with Stripe. With practical examples available on GitHub, the book gradually progresses from easy to advanced topics, cultivating the expertise required to develop, deploy, and monetize your own groundbreaking applications by harnessing the full potential of ChatGPT APIs.

Building AI Applications with Microsoft Semantic Kernel. Easily integrate generative AI capabilities and copilot experiences into your applications

Lucas A. Meyer

In the fast-paced world of AI, developers are constantly seeking efficient ways to integrate AI capabilities into their apps. Microsoft Semantic Kernel simplifies this process by using the GenAI features from Microsoft and OpenAI.Written by Lucas A. Meyer, a Principal Research Scientist in Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab, this book helps you get hands on with Semantic Kernel. It begins by introducing you to different generative AI services such as GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, demonstrating their integration with Semantic Kernel. You’ll then learn to craft prompt templates for reuse across various AI services and variables. Next, you’ll learn how to add functionality to Semantic Kernel by creating your own plugins. The second part of the book shows you how to combine multiple plugins to execute complex actions, and how to let Semantic Kernel use its own AI to solve complex problems by calling plugins, including the ones made by you. The book concludes by teaching you how to use vector databases to expand the memory of your AI services and how to help AI remember the context of earlier requests. You’ll also be guided through several real-world examples of applications, such as RAG and custom GPT agents.By the end of this book, you'll have gained the knowledge you need to start using Semantic Kernel to add AI capabilities to your applications.

Building AI Applications with OpenAI APIs. Leverage ChatGPT, Whisper, and DALL-E APIs to build 10 innovative AI projects - Second Edition

Martin Yanev

Unlock the power of AI in your applications with ChatGPT with this practical guide that shows you how to seamlessly integrate OpenAI APIs into your projects, enabling you to navigate complex APIs and ensure seamless functionality with ease.This new edition is updated with key topics such as OpenAI Embeddings, which’ll help you understand the semantic relationships between words and phrases. You’ll find out how to use ChatGPT, Whisper, and DALL-E APIs through 10 AI projects using the latest OpenAI models, GPT-3.5, and GPT-4, with Visual Studio Code as the IDE. Within these projects, you’ll integrate ChatGPT with frameworks and tools such as Flask, Django, Microsoft Office APIs, and PyQt. You’ll get to grips with NLP tasks, build a ChatGPT clone, and create an AI code bug-fixing SaaS app. The chapters will also take you through speech recognition, text-to-speech capabilities, language translation, generating email replies, creating PowerPoint presentations, and fine-tuning ChatGPT, along with adding payment methods by integrating the ChatGPT API with Stripe.By the end of this book, you’ll be able to develop, deploy, and monetize your own groundbreaking applications by harnessing the full potential of ChatGPT APIs.

Building AI Intensive Python Applications. Create intelligent apps with LLMs and vector databases

Rachelle Palmer, Ben Perlmutter, Ashwin Gangadhar, Nicholas Larew, ...

The era of generative AI is upon us, and this book serves as a roadmap to harness its full potential. With its help, you’ll learn the core components of the AI stack: large language models (LLMs), vector databases, and Python frameworks, and see how these technologies work together to create intelligent applications.The chapters will help you discover best practices for data preparation, model selection, and fine-tuning, and teach you advanced techniques such as retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to overcome common challenges, such as hallucinations and data leakage. You’ll get a solid understanding of vector databases, implement effective vector search strategies, refine models for accuracy, and optimize performance to achieve impactful results. You’ll also identify and address AI failures to ensure your applications deliver reliable and valuable results. By evaluating and improving the output of LLMs, you’ll be able to enhance their performance and relevance.By the end of this book, you’ll be well-equipped to build sophisticated AI applications that deliver real-world value.

Building an API Product. Design, implement, release, and maintain API products that meet user needs

Bruno Pedro

The exponential increase in the number of APIs is evidence of their widespread adoption by companies seeking to deliver value to users across diverse industries, making the art of building successful APIs an invaluable skill for anyone involved in product development. With this comprehensive guide, you’ll walk through the entire process of planning, designing, implementing, releasing, and maintaining successful API products. You’ll start by exploring all aspects of APIs, including their types, technologies, protocols, and lifecycle stages. Next, you’ll learn how to define an API strategy and identify business objectives, user personas, and jobs-to-be-done (JTBD). With these skills, you’ll delve into designing and validating API capabilities to create a machine-readable API definition. As you advance, the book helps you understand how to choose the right language and framework for securely releasing an API server and offers insights into analyzing API usage metrics, improving performance, and creating compelling documentation that users love. Finally, you’ll discover ways to support users, manage versions, and communicate changes or the retirement of an API.By the end of this API development book, you’ll have the confidence and skills to create API products that truly stand out in the market.

Building an FPS Game with Unity. Create a high-quality first person shooter game using the Unity game engine and the popular UFPS and Probuilder frameworks

John P. Doran, jamal seaton

Building an RPG with Unity 2018. Leverage the power of Unity 2018 to build elements of an RPG. - Second Edition

Vahé Karamian

In a role-playing game (RPG), users control a character, usually in the game's imaginary universe. Unity has become a top choice for developers looking to create these kinds of immersive RPGs.Building an RPG with Unity 2018, based on building some of the most common RPG features, teaches you tips, tricks, and techniques that can be applied to your own game.To start with, the book guides you through the fundamentals of role-playing games. You will learn the necessary aspects of building an RPG, such as structuring the game environment, customizing characters, controlling the camera, and designing other attributes such as inventory and weapons. You will also explore designing game levels by adding more features. Once you have understood the bigger picture, you will understand how to tackle the obstacles of networking in Unity and implement multiplayer mode for your RPG games.By the end of the book, you will be able to build upon the core RPG framework elements to create your own immersive games.

Building an RPG with Unreal 4.x. Get to grips with building the foundations of an RPG using Unreal Engine 4.x

Alan R. Stagner, Steve Santello

Now that Unreal Engine 4 has become one of the most cutting edge game engines in the world, developers are looking for the best ways of creating games of any genre in the engine. This book will lay out the foundation of creating a turn-based RPG in Unreal Engine 4.12. The book starts by walking you through creating a turn-based battle system that can hold commands for party members and enemies. You’ll get your hands dirty by creating NPCs such as shop owners, and important mechanics, that make up every RPG such as a currency system, inventory, dialogue, and character statistics. Although this book specifically focuses on the creation of a turn-based RPG, there are a variety of topics that can be utilized when creating many other types of genres.By the end of the book, you will be able to build upon core RPG framework elements to create your own game experience.

Building Analytics Teams. Harnessing analytics and artificial intelligence for business improvement

John K. Thompson, Douglas B. Laney

In Building Analytics Teams, John K. Thompson, with his 30+ years of experience and expertise, illustrates the fundamental concepts of building and managing a high-performance analytics team, including what to do, who to hire, projects to undertake, and what to avoid in the journey of building an analytically sound team. The core processes in creating an effective analytics team and the importance of the business decision-making life cycle are explored to help achieve initial and sustainable success.The book demonstrates the various traits of a successful and high-performing analytics team and then delineates the path to achieve this with insights on the mindset, advanced analytics models, and predictions based on data analytics. It also emphasizes the significance of the macro and micro processes required to evolve in response to rapidly changing business needs.The book dives into the methods and practices of managing, developing, and leading an analytics team. Once you've brought the team up to speed, the book explains how to govern executive expectations and select winning projects.By the end of this book, you will have acquired the knowledge to create an effective business analytics team and develop a production environment that delivers ongoing operational improvements for your organization.

Building and Automating Penetration Testing Labs in the Cloud. Set up cost-effective hacking environments for learning cloud security on AWS, Azure, and GCP

Joshua Arvin Lat

The significant increase in the number of cloud-related threats and issues has led to a surge in the demand for cloud security professionals. This book will help you set up vulnerable-by-design environments in the cloud to minimize the risks involved while learning all about cloud penetration testing and ethical hacking.This step-by-step guide begins by helping you design and build penetration testing labs that mimic modern cloud environments running on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Next, you’ll find out how to use infrastructure as code (IaC) solutions to manage a variety of lab environments in the cloud. As you advance, you’ll discover how generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, can be leveraged to accelerate the preparation of IaC templates and configurations. You’ll also learn how to validate vulnerabilities by exploiting misconfigurations and vulnerabilities using various penetration testing tools and techniques. Finally, you’ll explore several practical strategies for managing the complexity, cost, and risks involved when dealing with penetration testing lab environments in the cloud.By the end of this penetration testing book, you’ll be able to design and build cost-effective vulnerable cloud lab environments where you can experiment and practice different types of attacks and penetration testing techniques.

Building and Delivering Microservices on AWS. Master software architecture patterns to develop and deliver microservices to AWS Cloud

Amar Deep Singh, Jeff Carpenter

Reliable automation is crucial for any code change going into production. A release pipeline enables you to deliver features for your users efficiently and promptly. AWS CodePipeline, with its powerful integration and automation capabilities of building, testing, and deployment, offers a unique solution to common software delivery issues such as outages during deployment, a lack of standard delivery mechanisms, and challenges faced in creating sustainable pipelines.You’ll begin by developing a Java microservice and using AWS services such as CodeCommit, CodeArtifact, and CodeGuru to manage and review the source code. You’ll then learn to use the AWS CodeBuild service to build code and deploy it to AWS infrastructure and container services using the CodeDeploy service. As you advance, you’ll find out how to provision cloud infrastructure using CloudFormation templates and Terraform. The concluding chapters will show you how to combine all these AWS services to create a reliable and automated CodePipeline for delivering microservices from source code check-in to deployment without any downtime. Finally, you’ll discover how to integrate AWS CodePipeline with third-party services such as Bitbucket, Blazemeter, Snyk, and Jenkins.By the end of this microservices book, you’ll have gained the hands-on skills to build release pipelines for your applications.

Building Android Games with Cocos2d-x. Learn to create engaging and spectacular games for Android using Cocos2d-x

Raydelto Hernadez, Raydelto Hernandez

Building Android UIs with Custom Views. Build amazing custom user interfaces with Android custom views

Raimon Rafols Montane

To build great user interfaces for your Android apps that go beyond the standard UI elements, you need to use custom Android views. With these, you can give your app a distinctive look and ensure that it functions properly across multiple devices. This book will help you construct a great UI for your apps by teaching you how to create custom Android views. You will start by creating your first Android custom view and go through the design considerations. You will then see how the right choices will enable your custom view to perform seamlessly across multiple platforms and Android versions. You will create custom styleable attributes that work with Android XML layouts, learn to process touch events, define custom attributes, and add properties and events to them. By the end of this book, you will be able to create apps with custom views that are responsive and adaptable to make your app distinctive and an instant hit with its users.

Building Apple Watch Projects. Click here to enter text

Stuart Grimshaw

With Apple’s eagerly anticipated entry into the wearable arena, the field is wide open for a new era of app development. The Apple Watch is one of the most important technologies of our time. This easy-to-understand book takes beginners on a delightful journey of discovering the features available to the developer, right up to the completion of medium-level projects ready for App Store submission. It provides the fastest way to develop real-world apps for the Apple Watch by teaching you the concepts of Watch UI, visual haptic and audio, message and data exchange between watch and phone, Web communication, and finally Visual, haptic as well as audio feedback for users.By the end of this book, you will have developed at least four fully functioning apps for deployment on watchOS 2.