May 11, 2011

PHPHypertext Preprocessor

What is the technology?

✤ Server side scripting and programming language.

✤ Can be embedded in HTML

✤ Free and open sourced - community

✤ frequently updates and fixes bugs

✤ downloadable templates and open source solutions

What is the technology?

✤ Cross-platform - use any OS server.

✤ Can relay information about specific users to produce certain results (Echo)

✤ Facebook uses this language to target users with custom advertisements

Who? When? Why?

✤ Rasmus Lerdorf, in 1995

✤ wanted to see how many people were looking at his resume

✤ released source code to public - help improve and fix bugs

✤ More compatible across multiple platforms than C, but more limited than Perl

History✤ 1997 - PHP 2.0, lots of initial bugs fixed, as many as 50,000

domains had it installed (1% of all domains on the Internet at the time)

✤ 1998 - PHP 3.0, most resembles what we know today. Re-written by Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski (halted production of PHP 2.0)

✤ tremendous success, “object oriented syntax support” (attracted developers)

✤ broadened scope, not just for personal home page use

✤ At its peak, it was installed on ~10% of all Web servers

^ Suraski - Gutman ^

History

✤ 1999 - PHP 4.0, Gutmans and Suraski began rewrite, focused on modularity and performance

✤ supported more Web servers, HTTP sessions, output buffering, higher security for personal data

✤ several million sites had it installed, accounting for over 20% of all Web domains.

✤ 2004 - PHP 5.0, uses Zend Engine 2.0

Percentage of top websites

Best Practices for PHP

✤ Make sure to always use long form of open tags <?php

✤ never use short hand <?

✤ Code to a set standard (Zend Framework)

✤ Learn and follow the PHP Manual

✤ Make sure to comment your code and changes but also use meaningful and consistent naming.

PHP Managment

✤ Open source community.

✤ Centered around Zend: PHP company founded by Gutmans and Suraski

✤ Zend and PHP developers receive significant funding from venture capitalist firms and from companies like Intel.

Related/Competing Technologies

✤ Perl

✤ ASP (Active Server Pages)

✤ ColdFusion

Certification

✤ Zend Certification: http://www.zend.com/en/services/certification

✤ most credible

✤ costs between $125 and 160, but include yellow page listing

✤ W3 School Certification: http://www.w3schools.com/cert/cert_php.asp

✤ taken online, decreased credibility, $75

✤ quick and easy, but not for serious professionals

Future of PHPCake PHP

Live examples

✤ Amazon

✤ Facebook

✤ Yahoo

✤ Digg

✤ Photobucket