PHP Introduction
What is PHP?
PHP is a widely-used, free, and efficient server language, its an alternative to competitors such as Microsoft's ASP. The PHP Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) is a server scripting language that allows web developers to create dynamic content that interacts with databases.
PHP is basically used for developing web based software applications. PHP is an open-source, interpreted, and object-oriented scripting language that can be executed at the server-side. PHP is well suited for web development. Therefore, it is used to develop web applications (an application that executes on the server and generates the dynamic page.). PHP was created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994 but appeared in the market in 1995. PHP 8 is the latest stable release.
Why Learn PHP?
PHP started out as a small open source project that evolved as more and more people found out how useful it was. Rasmus Lerdorf unleashed the first version of PHP way back in 1994. PHP is can be seen as one of the paramount language for students and working professionals to become a great Software Engineer specially when they are working in Web Development Domain. Let us look out some advantages of learning PHP:
- PHP is a server side scripting language that is embedded in HTML. It is used to manage dynamic content, databases, session tracking, even build entire e-commerce sites.
- It is integrated with a number of popular databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Sybase, Informix, and Microsoft SQL Server.
- PHP is pleasingly zippy in its execution, especially when compiled as an Apache module on the Unix side. The MySQL server, once started, executes even very complex queries with huge result sets in record-setting time.
- PHP supports a large number of major protocols such as POP3, IMAP, and LDAP. PHP4 added support for Java and distributed object architectures (COM and CORBA), making n-tier development a possibility for the first time.
- PHP is forgiving: PHP language tries to be as forgiving as possible.
- PHP Syntax is C-Like.
<?php echo "Hello, World!";>
Applications of PHP
These are the following that make PHP unique.
- PHP can generate dynamic page content and handle session tracking for the website
- PHP performs system functions, i.e. from files on a system it can create, open, read, write, and close them.
- PHP can handle forms, i.e. gather data from files, save data to a file, through email you can send data, return data to the user.
- You add, delete, modify elements within your database through PHP.
- Access cookies variables and set cookies.
- Using PHP, you can restrict users to access some pages of your website.
- It can encrypt data.
- With PHP you are not limited to output HTML. You can output images, PDF files, and even Flash movies. You can also output any text, such as XHTML and XML.
