What is PHP?

Category > AJAX || Published on : Thursday, August 14, 2014 || Views: 8146 || free tutorials for php beginner php video tutorials free php tutorials with examples learn php online php online tutorial php language tutorial php lessons .= php what is php language what is mysql what is php used for what is php developer php tutorial what is html advantages of php what is php framework


 PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML.

Nice, but what does that mean? An example will explain you in great details:
 

"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

Example

"Hi, I'm a running PHP script!"; ?>


 Instead of lots of commands to output HTML (as seen in C or Perl),  PHP pages contain HTML with embedded code that does "something" (in this case, output "Hi, I'm a running PHP script!"). The  PHP code is enclosed in special start and end processing instructions that allow you to jump into and out of "PHP mode."

What distinguishes  PHP from something like client-side JavaScript is that the code is executed on the server, generating HTML which is then sent to the client. The client would receive the results of running that script, but would not know what the underlying code was. You can even configure your web server to process all your HTML files with PHP, and then there's really no way that users can tell what you have up your sleeve.

The best things in using PHP are that it is extremely simple for a newcomer, but offers many advanced features for a professional programmer. Don't be afraid reading the long list of PHP's features. You can jump in, in a short time, and start writing simple scripts in a few hours.

PHP is probably the most popular scripting language on the web. It is used to enhance web pages. With PHP , you can do things like create username and password login pages, check details from a form, create forums, picture galleries, surveys, and a whole lot more. If you've come across a web page that ends in PHP, then the author has written some programming code to liven up the plain, old HTML.

PHP is known as a server-sided language. That's because the PHP doesn't get executed on your computer, but on the computer you requested the page from. The results are then handed over to you, and displayed in your browser. Other scripting languages you may have heard of are ASP, Python and Perl. (You don't need to know any of these to make a start on PHP.)

But PHP is so popular that if you're looking for a career in the web design/web scripting industry then you just have to know it! In these tutorials, we'll get you up and running. And, hopefully, it will be a lot easier than you think.

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