Getting Started and Introduction to PHP

What is PHP?

• PHP is Open Source server-side programming or scripting language that is specially developed for web development and can be embedded into HTML.
• PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor but it’s the original name, the personal home page.
• PHP runs on various platforms like Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac, etc.
• PHP is compatible with almost all server Apache, IIS, etc.
• PHP file extension .php
• PHP is free to download and use

What is a PHP File?

• PHP files can contain text, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP code
• PHP code is executed on the server, and the result is returned to the browser as plain HTML
• PHP files have the extension " .php"

What Can PHP Do?

• PHP can generate the dynamic page content
• PHP can create, open, read, write, delete, and close files on the server
• PHP can collect form data
• PHP can send and receive cookies
• PHP can add, delete, modify data in your database
• PHP can be used to control user-access
• PHP can encrypt data

With PHP you are not limited to output HTML. You can output images, PDF files, and even Flash movies. You can also output any text, such as XHTML and XML.

Why PHP?

• PHP runs on various platforms (Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, etc.)
• PHP is compatible with almost all servers used today (Apache, IIS, etc.)
• PHP supports a wide range of databases
• PHP is free. Download it from the official PHP resource: www.php.net
• PHP is easy to learn and runs efficiently on the server-side

Comment below if you have any queries related to the above tutorial for an introduction to PHP programming language.