Introduction to PHP
1.
PHP
was created by Rasmus
Lerdorf in
1994. It’s currently maintained by the PHP Development Team.
2.
PHP
originally stood for Personal Home Page.Now, it stands
for Hypertext Preprocessor. It’s a recursive acronym
because the first word itself is also an acronym.
3.
PHP
is an interpreted language, i.e., there is no need for compilation.
4.
PHP
is faster than other scripting languages, for example, ASP and JSP.
5. PHP is a server-side scripting language,
which is used to manage the dynamic content of the website.
(When you open a website on your web
browser, for example, https://www.gmail.com
The
web browser sends an HTTP request to a web server where phptutorial.net
locates. The web server receives the request and responds with an HTML
document.
In
this example, the web browser is a client while the web server is the server.
The client requests for a page, and the server serves the request.
PHP
runs on the web server, processes the request, and returns the HTML document.)
6. PHP is general-purpose scripting language.
(When it comes to the purpose of the
programming languages, there are two main types: domain-specific and
general-purpose languages.
The
domain-specific languages are used within specific application domains. For
example, SQL is a domain-specific language. It’s used mainly for querying data
from relational databases. And SQL cannot be used for other purposes.
On the other
hand, PHP is a general-purpose language because PHP can develop various
applications.
7. PHP is cross-platform scripting language.
(PHP can run on
all major operating systems, including Linux, Windows, and macOS.
You can use PHP
with all leading web servers such as Nginx, OpenBSD, and Apache. Some cloud
environments also support PHP like Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS.
PHP is quite
flexible. It’s not just limited to processing HTML. PHP has built-in support
for generating PDF, GIF, JPEG, and PNG images.
One notable
feature of PHP is that it supports many databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL,
MS SQL, db2, Oracle Database, and MongoDB.)
8.
PHP
can be embedded into HTML.
9.
PHP
is an object-oriented language.
10.
PHP
is an open-source scripting language.
11.
PHP
is simple and easy to learn language.
Why use PHP
- It
handles dynamic content, database as well as session tracking for the
website.
- You
can create sessions in PHP.
- It can
access cookies variable and also set cookies.
- It
helps to encrypt the data and apply validation.
- PHP
supports several protocols such as HTTP, POP3, SNMP, LDAP, IMAP, and many
more.
- Using
PHP language, you can control the user to access some pages of your
website.
- As PHP
is easy to install and set up, this is the main reason why PHP is the best
language to learn.
- PHP
can handle the forms, such as - collect the data from users using forms,
save it into the database, and return useful information to the
user. For example - Registration form.
What can PHP do
PHP has two
main applications:
- Server-side scripting – PHP is
well-suited for developing dynamic websites and web applications.
- Command-line scripting – like Python and
Perl, you can run PHP script from the command line to perform administrative
tasks like sending emails and generating PDF files.
How PHP Works
- First,
the web browser sends an HTTP request to the web server, e.g., index.php.
- Second,
the PHP preprocessor that locates on the web server processes PHP code to
generate the HTML document.
- Third,
the web server sends the HTML document back to the web browser.
Advantages of PHP
Since PHP
is designed for the web in the first place, it brings many advantages to web
development:
1. Simple – PHP is quite easy to learn and get started.
2. Fast – PHP websites typically run very fast.
3. Stable – PHP is stable since it has been in existence for a long time.
4. Open-source and free – PHP is open source and free. It means that you don’t have to pay a license fee to use PHP to develop software products.
5. Performance: PHP script is executed much faster than those scripts which are written in other languages such as JSP and ASP. PHP uses its own memory, so the server workload and loading time is automatically reduced, which results in faster processing speed and better performance.
6. Familiarity with syntax: PHP has easily understandable syntax.
Programmers are comfortable coding with it.
7. Embedded:PHP code can be easily embedded within
HTML tags and script.
8. Platform Independent:PHP is available for WINDOWS, MAC, LINUX
& UNIX operating system. A PHP application developed in one OS can be
easily executed in other OS also.
9. Database Support: PHP supports all the leading databases such as MySQL, SQLite,
ODBC, etc.
10. Error Reporting -PHP has predefined error reporting
constants to generate an error notice or warning at runtime. E.g., E_ERROR,
E_WARNING, E_STRICT, E_PARSE.
11. Loosely Typed Language:PHP allows us to use a variable without
declaring its datatype. It will be taken automatically at the time of execution
based on the type of data it contains on its value.
12. Web servers Support:PHP is compatible with almost all local
servers used today like Apache, Netscape, Microsoft IIS, etc.
13. Security:PHP is a secure language to develop the
website. It consists of multiple layers of security to prevent threads and
malicious attacks.
14. Control:Different programming languages require
long script or code, whereas PHP can do the same work in a few lines of code.
It has maximum control over the websites like you can make changes easily
whenever you want.
15. A Helpful PHP Community:It has a large community of developers
who regularly updates documentation, tutorials, online help, and FAQs. Learning
PHP from the communities is one of the significant benefits.
Prerequisite
Before learning PHP, you must have the basic knowledge of HTML,
CSS, and JavaScript. So, learn these
technologies for better implementation of PHP.
1.
HTML - HTML
is used to design static webpage.
2.
CSS - CSS
helps to make the webpage content more effective and attractive.
3.
JavaScript - JavaScript is used to design an interactive website.
