PHP Introduction
What is PHP?
- PHP is an acronym for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor"
- PHP is a widely-used, open source server-side scripting language
- PHP scripts are executed on the server
- PHP is free to download and use
PHP is an amazing and popular language!
PHP is powerful enough to be at the core of the biggest
blogging system on the web!
PHP is deep enough to run large social networks!
PHP is easy enough to be a beginner's first server-side
scripting language!
Why PHP?
- PHP runs on all major platforms (Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, etc.)
- PHP is compatible with all leading web servers (Nginx, Apache, Cloudflare, Microsoft IIS, etc.)
- PHP supports a wide range of databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL, db2, Oracle Database, MongoDB, etc.)
- PHP is free. Download it from the official PHP resource: www.php.net
- PHP is easy to learn and runs efficiently on the server side
What You Should Already Know
Before you continue you should have a basic understanding of the following:
If you want to study these subjects first, find the tutorials on our Home page.
What is a PHP File?
- PHP files have the file extension
.php - PHP files can contain text, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP code
- PHP code is executed on the server, and the result is returned to the browser as HTML
What Can PHP Do?
- PHP can generate dynamic page content
- PHP can create, open, read, write, delete, and close files on the server
- PHP can collect form data
- PHP can send and receive cookies
- PHP can add, delete, modify data in your database
- PHP can be used to control user-access
- PHP can encrypt data
With PHP you are not limited to output HTML. You can output images or PDF files. You can also output any text, such as XHTML and XML.
What is new in PHP 8?
- Just-In-Time (JIT) Compiler - for faster execution times and improved performance
- Union Types - allow variables and function return types to accept multiple types
- Named Arguments - allows to pass arguments to functions or methods by their name
- Match Expressions - a more powerful and concise alternative to the traditional switch statement
- Nullsafe Operator (?->) - an easy way to access the properties and methods of an object when it may be null
- Attributes - allows you to add metadata to your code
- Improved Error Handling
- New Functions - like str_contains(), str_starts_with(), str_ends_with(), and get_debug_type()
