What is PHP

• PHP (officially "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor") is a server-side HTML-embedded scripting language – means that code does not need to be compiled before

it gets used it gets processed on the fly as necessary– has the capability of executing the script on the

server and serving the output as a HTML File– it is responsible for manipulating the data which is

filled in the entire web forms, any where in the net.– advantage of interacting with the databases and to

perform all types of server manipulations directly

History of PHP

History of PHP

• PHP/FI (Personal Home Page/Forms Interpreter) is the first release of PHP written by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995.– It was inititally a simple set of Perl scripts for tracking

accesses to his online resume.

• PHP/FI evolved into PHP 1.0 and 2.0, advanced piece of software that understood complex scripts.– Php 2.0 was released in 1997 and it had around

50,000 domains in which it was installed in.

History (cont’n)

• PHP 3.0 was created by Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski in 1997 as a complete rewrite of the original PHP/FI 2.0. – was the first version that closely resembles PHP as

we know it today.• PHP 3.0 had strong extensibility features, with

solid infrastruscture for lots of databases and API’s. – It attracted dozens of developers to join in and submit

new existing modules.– by the end of 1998 it was installed on hundreds of

thousands of websites.

History (cont)

• PHP 4.0 officially released may 2000.

-based on the ZEND engine, a rewrite of PHP’s core to achieve improved performance of complex applications, and improve modularity of PHP’s code base

- May 2003, almost 13 million domains were using PHP according to Netcraft survey and PHP.nets figures

Features

• PHP has support for most of the web servers today. – Apache, Microsoft IIS, PWS, Netscape and iPlanet servers,

Oreilly Website Pro server, Caudium, Xitami, OmniHTTPd, and many others.

• PHP has support for a wide range of databases– Adabas D, Ingres, Oracle (OCI7 and OCI8), dBase, InterBase, Ovrimos,

Empress, FrontBase, FilePro (read-only), mSQL,Solid, Hyperwave, Direct MS-SQL, Sybase, IBM DB2, MySQL, Velocis, Informix, ODBC, Unix dbm

Features

• You can very rapidly develop web applications in PHP

• PHP applications are very stable and do not depend on the browser technologies

Features

• Dynamically typed language, so it makes it extremely easy and fast to develop in.

• PHP has Zend optimizer which speeds up the performance

• PHP has a very large user base and developer base

Open Source - PHP is open source, you can modify the

actual language to your needs.

Disadvantages

• Primitive Error Handling • It is a Dynamically typed language, so it makes it

extremely easy to hang yourself if you don't know what you are doing

• Some of the function names do not have a consistent naming scheme.

• Object orientation is really syntatic sugar. Objects are only slightly more than assoicative arrays with functions bound to them.

• Lacks Database Abstraction

Sample Programs

Example1

• A basic PHP script:

<?php

echo "Hello World!";

?>

Example 2text.html <FORM METHOD =

POSTACTION="text.php"> Who is your favorite author?<INPUT AME="Author"TYPE="TEXT"><INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT>

</FORM>

text.php <?php

echo "Your favorite author is: $Author";?>

Example 3Number.html

<FORM METHOD=GET ACTION ="number.php"> I would like to know: <BR>

<INPUT NAME ="opt1" TYPE = "Radio" Value="fact"> the factorial of <BR><INPUT NAME ="opt1" TYPE = "Radio" Value="prime"> if the following number is prime <BR> <INPUT NAME ="opt1" TYPE = "Radio" Value="next">the number following <BR> <INPUT NAME =

"Value" TYPE="Text"><BR><INPUT TYPE = SUBMIT> </FORM>

Example 3 con’tnumber.php <?phpfunction fact($Value){

if($Value<=1) return 1;elsereturn

$Value*fact($Value-1); }function isPrime($Value) {

$Count = 2;do{$Remainder = $Value%$Count;$Count++;}while ($Remainder !=0 AND $Count<$Value);if(($Count<$Value) OR ($Value == 0)){

echo "$Value is not prime";}else{

echo "$Value is prime";}

}

switch($opt1){ case "fact":

echo "$Value has a factorial of" . fact($Value);break;

case "prime": echo isPrime($Value);break;

case "next": echo "The next number after

$Value is " . ($Value+1); break;

} ?>

Links

• php manual: http://www.php.net/docs.php• compiler url http://www.php.net/downloads.php

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnaspp/html/phpvsaspnet.asp (asp vs Php)

• http://www.zend.com/