PHP in easy steps, 4th edition

Updated for PHP 8

Mike McGrath

• Publisher: In Easy Steps Limited
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781840789393
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Programming in PHP
• Index: Computer Science

PHP in easy steps, 4th edition demonstrates every aspect of the language you'll need to produce professional web programming results. Its examples provide clear syntax-highlighted code, which is freely downloadable, showing PHP language basics including variables, arrays, logic, looping, functions and classes.

• Install a free web server and the PHP interpreter to create an environment in which you can produce your own data-driven web pages.
• Write PHP server-side scripts; master PHP operators and control structures; process HTML form data; get cookies and session data; access Web Services APIs over HTTP... and much more!

PHP in easy steps, 4th edition is ideal for PHP newbies who want to quickly learn the fundamentals of server-side programming with PHP and create interactive web pages. Also, useful for PHP pros who want to grasp the new PHP 8 features and achieve optimum performance!

Updated for PHP 8.

1

Getting started

Welcome to the exciting world of the interactive web with PHP. This chapter demonstrates how to create a dynamic development environment with a web server and the PHP engine.

Introducing PHP

Installing the Abyss server

Installing the PHP engine

Integrating Abyss and PHP

Embedding PHP script code

Scripting by the rules

Improving performance

Enabling JIT compilation

Summary

Introducing PHP

The most appealing modern websites provide a customized user experience by dynamically responding to some current conditions – user name, time of day, latest blog, shopping cart contents, etc. Many of these dynamic websites are created using PHP.

This is the official logo of the PHP project – the official online home of PHP can be found at php.net

What is PHP?

PHP is a widely-used general purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. It was created by programmer Rasmus Lerdorf, as a set of scripts to maintain his website that he released as “Personal Home Page Tools (PHP Tools) version 1.0” on June 8, 1995.

The tools were extended in the version 2 release of 1997, and the name changed to become a recursive acronym “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor” in version 3 the following year. Performance, reliability and extensibility were improved in 2000 with the release of PHP4, which was powered by the Zend engine virtual machine.

Subsequently, PHP5 was released in 2004 powered by the new Zend II engine and produced as free software by the PHP group. A planned experimental version PHP6, which intended to introduce native Unicode support throughout PHP, was abandoned but PHP7 was released in 2015. PHP8 was released in 2020 and offers “Just In Time” (JIT) compilation for improved performance. Today, PHP is installed on over 20 million websites and 1 million web servers.

Why is PHP popular?

•PHP is extremely simple for a newcomer, but offers many advanced features for a professional programmer.

•PHP code is enclosed in special start and end processing tags that allow you to jump into and out of “PHP mode”, to implement instructions within an HTML document.

•PHP code is executed on the server (“server-side”), unlike JavaScript code that is executed in the browser (“client-side”). The client receives the results of running the script without knowing what the underlying code was. Recently, server-side has become known as “The Cloud”.

This is the “elePHPant” – the mascot of the PHP project, designed by Vincent Pontier.

Understanding The Cloud

Whenever a user asks to view a web page in their browser, it requests the...