- PHP Tutorial for beginners
- Contents
- What is a Scripting Language?
- Programming Language Vs Scripting Language
- History of PHP
- What You Can Do with PHP?
- Advantages of PHP over Other Languages
- Famous Websites build in PHP:
- Creating a PHP File
- «Hello World» Script in PHP:
- PHP Scripting Engine Name: What is it?
- What is the name of scripting engine in PHP?
- What is the name of scripting engine in PHP?
- PHP script language or programming language?
- Php is a scripting language or server side language?
- Difference between: $_SERVER[‘SCRIPT_NAME’] and $_SERVER[‘PHP_SELF’]
PHP Tutorial for beginners
PHP Tutorial : As we have already studied in the previous PHP Tutorial, What is PHP, PHP is a hugely popular open-source server-side scripting language. We can create dynamic webpages in it, which enhances the user experience on the website.
In JavaScript, we talked about client-side scripting language, but here we are using the term server-side scripting language . Both JavaScript and PHP are scripting language, but the difference comes in their execution place. Yes, JavaScript runs on user’s local machine, but a PHP script will always get executed on the server. So, the server which anyone would use to run their PHP script has to PHP enabled. It should have the capability to run a PHP script on it.
A browser doesn’t know how to interpret PHP Script, so the server first interprets the PHP Script and then sends the interpreted script to the browser in the form of plain HTML code.
Contents
A new catch in using PHP is that because it is a server-side scripting language so, it needs a server’s environment even when you are developing the script in your local machine. No need to worry about this as there are many software which you can use to create a server environment in the localhost, which is your PC, and then start writing PHP code. But when your website is live, then all the code will be interpreted by the server itself and the client’s system need not to have a server installed, only a browser is enough.
PHP can also be integrated with many popular databases, which includes MySQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, etc. The latest major version of PHP is PHP7 , it has .php file extension.
This PHP tutorial will help you to learn PHP in the most simple and easy way with proper examples in each concept. We also have an online PHP editor which you can use to develop PHP applications right from our websites and can also see the output of your code. Stay with us and follow this PHP course to start developing PHP applications and become a PHP developer.
What is a Scripting Language?
A scripting language is a set of instructions that is interpreted line by line at runtime. Unlike any programming language, scripts are usually embedded within other languages code and enhances their capabilities and features.
The main objective of using a script is to enhance the user experience and application’s performance. Server Side and Client Side are the two types of scripting languages. Server side are interpreted on the server while the other one is interpreted on the browser installed on client’s system.
Programming Language Vs Scripting Language
History of PHP
Rasmus Lerdorf, the creator of PHP,
«I don’t know how to stop it, there was never any intent to write a programming language. I have absolutely no idea how to write a programming language, I just kept adding the next logical step on the way.»
Sounds easy right, well we all know it would have been quite a hectic process. In 1994, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote the very first version of PHP. It was written in C language to replace the PERL code he has been using on his personal homepage. In 1995, he released the first version of PHP for public use and called it ‘Personal Homepage’ . After this, the 3rd version was released in 1998 and also got renamed to ‘Hypertext Preprocessor’ .
PHP was slowly becoming popular day by day and also the newer versions got released frequently which enhanced its features even more. The latest version was released in 2015 which is called PHP7 .
What You Can Do with PHP?
PHP can do many things because of its big library and inbuilt functions and statements. It is the most widely used language for web development globally right now. Some applications of PHP are:
- It can develop GUI based Applications .
- Dynamic web pages an be created using PHP.
- It can create and manage Cookies efficiently using its pre-built functions.
- Data representation is also possible in PHP using tools like Image_Graph.
- PHP can develop Web Content Management System, one biggest example is WordPress.
- It supports various databases like MySQL , Oracle , etc. and can manage them accordingly.
- PHP supports file handling on the server i.e., it can create, open, read, write, delete, and close files on the server.
- It provides encryption of data which provides safe transmission of the data.
Other than these, PHP can create flash movies , can do image processing and graphic design also. It can also create PDF files by using PDFLib library. We will see many applications of PHP in the tutorial futher.
Advantages of PHP over Other Languages
If you’re familiar with other server-side languages like ASP.NET or Java, you might be wondering what makes PHP so special. There are several advantages why one should choose PHP.
- Simple and easy to learn: It is similar to C and JAVA to an extent and that’s why people find it easier to learn PHP as their first scripting language. It is considered as a preferable choice for the beginners.
- Open source: It is free to use , their are no licenses, restrictions, or royalty fees involved which helps in developing a website at minimal cost. As it is open source, developers from all around the world can maintain and develop it further.
- Portability: PHP supports different platforms such as Windows, Linux, Mac OS, etc. and it is also compatible with majority of popular servers such Apache , IIS, etc.
- Frameworks: It has a wide variety of Frameworks which can be used to develop PHP applications easily. Examples : CodeIgniter , Laravel , CakePHP , etc.
- Quality Support: Since PHP is an Open Sourced project many blogs and forums are available online which can solve queries. Finding help related to PHP is very easy.
- Integration: It can easily gets integrated with many web applications and that’s why any industry you can think of like fashion, banking, health, government, etc uses PHP applications and its modules and API’s.
Famous Websites build in PHP:
PHP is right now unambiguously the most used Scripting language to develop dynamic websites. Some popular websites developed in PHP are:
- Social Websites: Facebook, Digg
- Blogs/CMS: WordPress, Drupal
- E-commerce: Magento, Opencart
- Social Websites: Yahoo, Wikipedia, Paytm, Flickr
Creating a PHP File
The first question that arises is that, what would be the extension of a file containing PHP code? let’s see. File extension are very important as it helps the system to identify the type of a file so that it could run that file in a suitable program. In PHP also if we want the server to identify our PHP files and scripts, the file should be saved under .php extension.
The next thing is how to embed PHP code within other languages’ code. Well, if we talk about web development, PHP was designed to work with HTML, it can easily be embedded into the HTML code like this:
The PHP code will always be written inside HTML tags if you want to embed it. A PHP file without HTML tags can also be created, these are called Pure PHP files because these files only contain PHP’s code.
Always remember that whenever you write PHP code it will be written inside tag. It is same like writing JavaScript inside tags. Even when you embed the PHP code with HTML you have to write it inside the php tags otherwise the server will not identify the PHP code. Only the code enclosed within php tags will be interpreted by the server.
Note : PHP is case sensitive language, “$NAME” is a different variable from “$name”. But PHP tags are not case-sensitive, they can be written on any case but it is strongly recommended to use lower case only.
«Hello World» Script in PHP:
Let’s see the very first script of PHP, the ‘HELLO WORLD’ script. The most simple and the first script program any programmer creates on any language. For this, the PHP code has to be embedded with the HTML code. Look at the example below:
PHP Scripting Engine Name: What is it?
While distinguishing between scripting languages and programming languages, I learned that scripting languages are executed on the client machine, whereas programming languages like c#, vb, java, and php are executed on the server machine. It was also mentioned that if a programming language’s code can be combined with or integrated into another language or script, it’s considered a scripting language.
What is the name of scripting engine in PHP?
What is the name of scripting engine in PHP?
The scripting engine that powers PHP is called Zend Engine 3. originally codenamed PHP-NG or Next Generation.
Web Scripting and its Types, Web Scripting and its Types. The process of creating and embedding scripts in a web page is known as web-scripting. A script or a computer-script is a list of commands that are embedded in a web-page normally and are interpreted and executed by a certain program or scripting engine. Scripts may be written for …
PHP script language or programming language?
I have always been perplexed by PHP called choosing to «Scripting language» instead of «programming language».
Should I refer to myself as a «PHP scripter» instead of a «PHP programmer»?
PHP programs can be complex, but they can still be compiled into .exe files that can be executed on Windows operating systems.
Traditionally, a language is categorized as a scripting language if it is not compiled, but this distinction is becoming less relevant. Nowadays, it may be more appropriate to refer to someone who works with PHP as a PHP programmer. Furthermore, the designation of «programmer» depends on the complexity of the tasks being performed with the language. For example, even individuals who use JavaScript, a language with «script» in its name, are considered programmers once they move beyond basic DOM manipulations using jQuery.
Bash-scripters are the only individuals I have come across recently who identify themselves as scripters.
Parsing — How exactly is a PHP script executed?, PHP became a compiled language in the year 2000, when PHP 4 was released for the first time. Until version 3, PHP source code was parsed and executed right away by the PHP interpreter. PHP 4 introduced the the Zend engine. This engine splits the processing of PHP code into several phases. The first phase parses PHP …
Php is a scripting language or server side language?
While going through the details of difference between scripting language and programming language, an interesting point caught my attention. It was highlighted that scripting languages operate on the client machine whereas languages such as c#, vb, java and php are designed to operate on a server. However, php is commonly referred to as a scripting language which creates confusion as it is used to code for server operations.
PHP and Javascript are both scripting languages, but they differ in their execution environment. PHP is primarily executed on the server-side using an interpreter, while Javascript is mostly executed on the client-side.
Both c and c++ are compiled languages languages as they can be executed without an interpreter, and they are compatible with both client and server hardware.
All four are programming languages.
The difference between Scripting Languages and compiled languages lies in their execution methods, rather than the hardware they are executed on.
On the PHP runs server side, the server executes the code and sends the output to the client. However, client-side code such as JavaScript runs in the browser without the involvement of the server.
Scripting language is a programming language that has a broad definition. As per Wikipedia’s excerpt, it can be defined as such.
A programming language that supports scripts, also known as a scripting language, is used to automate tasks that can be executed by a human operator. It is designed to work with a specific run-time environment, including software applications, web pages, operating systems, and embedded systems. Scripting languages can be seen as an extension language for a particular environment and are sometimes referred to as very high-level programming languages or job control languages on mainframes due to their high level of abstraction.
A scripting language, also known as a script language, supports scripting operations. PHP is classified as a scripting language due to its ability to embed code into HTML. When a programming language’s code can integrate with or be embedded in another language, it is known as an interoperable language. PHP requires a server to run its code and executes on the server, with the results being returned to the browser. As a result, PHP is classified as both a server-side language and a scripting language.
VBScript ScriptEngine, ScriptEngineBuildVersion, The ScriptEngine function returns the scripting language in use. This function can return one of the following strings: VBScript — Indicates that Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition is the current scripting engine; JScript — Indicates that Microsoft JScript is the current scripting engine
Difference between: $_SERVER[‘SCRIPT_NAME’] and $_SERVER[‘PHP_SELF’]
What is the difference between: