PHP: Concepts, Features, and Usage
PHP Introduction:
It is a general-purpose scripting language best suited for web development. PHP is an acronym for “Hypertext Preprocessor”. It was developed in 1994.
Most importantly, it is a powerful language for the development of dynamic and interactive web pages. Although PHP is an interpreted language still it is compiled down to an intermediate bytecode that is then interpreted by the runtime Zend engine. In fact, It is the widely used language for the web stack. And it is the core of the famous website CMS platform named “WordPress”.
Code Example:
<html>
<head>
<title>Hello dmathemes</title>
</head>
<body>
<?php echo "Hello, programming!";?>
</body>
</html>
File Content
PHP files have an extension “.php”. Its code is executed on the server, and the result is returned to the browser. Its files can contain text, HTML, CSS, Javascript, and of course PHP code.
Syntax and Features
PHP has C programming language-like syntax. There are a lot of programming language features available in the language, which are as follows:
- Variables
- Functions
- Arrays
- Form Handling
- Control Statements
- Loops
- Form Validation
- Comments
- Error Handling
Application of PHP and its Usage
- Firstly, it can create, open, read, write, delete, and close files on the server
- Also, It can generate dynamic page content
- With respect to the browser, It can send and receive cookies
- Also, it can collect form data
- It can be used to control user-access
- Moreover, it can add, delete, and modify data in your database
- It can encrypt data and apply validations on data
- Lastly, it can output text (JSON, XML), HTML, PDF files, and videos.
Advantages of PHP
- Free
- Open Source
- Loosely Typed Language
- Object Oriented Language
- Database Support (MySQL, MS SQL, etc)
- Runs on various platforms (Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac OS, etc)
- Webserver Support (Apache, IIS)
- Protocols Support (POP3, IMAP, and LDAP)
Characteristics of PHP
It has five important characteristics that make its practical nature possible:
- Efficiency
- Familiarity
- Flexibility
- Simplicity
- Security
PHP Frameworks
- CodeIgniter
- Joomla
- laravel
- WordPress
- magento
- CakePHP
Writer’s Website: https://www.codewithmind.com