Introduction to PHP

Introduction to PHP

Overview:

PHP is short name what is officially called "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor." Basically PHP is a server side scripting language, using which you can build dynamic website's. PHP can connect to various databases, perhaps the best part of PHP is that it is a open-source. It can be run on Unix, Linux, Windows, in short it can run virtually on all computing platforms so you can write PHP code on your home computer which has windows and then run the same code on a Unix/Linux Server.

So what can PHP do

Frankly speaking PHP is a complete scripting language and you can do almost anything with it, but mostly PHP is used with web-based programming and one of its most powerful features is database access. PHP can work with over 19 different types of databases! PHP can also communicate with other server-side languages such as Java and uses COM interfaces.

Mostly websites use the combination of PHP and MySQL database. MySQL is an industrial strength database which is open source. PHP has inbuilt support for MySQL database, but you can easily use PHP with Microsoft Access, MS-SQL Server, Oracle and other ODBC compliant databases.

How did PHP start?

Prior to PHP many web developers preferred to use Perl extensively to make dynamic websites but Perl was not that easy to learn as a result, there was a need of alternative server-side scripting languages which had a shorter learning curve and was easier to work with, thus PHP was born.

PHP was developed by Rasmus Lerdorf as a means of monitoring page views for his online resume, and slowly started making a mark. When PHP/FI was released in mid-1995, PHP has matured a lot since its early days and is now one of the most powerful scripting languages for building dynamic web sites and it can run on Unix, Linux and Windows.

What do I need to know to learn PHP

To work with PHP you need to know HTML (not necessary) but we are going to generate dynamic web pages with PHP so you need to know some basics of HTML. Don't you worry PHP is easy to learn and you can get a good grasp on PHP in a couple of weeks!

If you have used JavaScript or C, C++ PHP would be a walk in the park for you as its syntax is similar to those (don't worry PHP doesn't have scary pointer like C does).

The goal of PHPbuddy.com is to teach you the basics of PHP so that you can create your own dynamic websites!

Before you can work with PHP, you need to install PHP on your computer if you haven’t installed PHP yet, now is a good time to install PHP.