PHP

PHP is a server-side programming language that is very popular and often frowned upon. The acronym PHP was originally Personal Homepage to which later it changed its name to a more accurate Hypertext Pre-Processor. It uses a C style syntax and even a lot basic C functions.

Examples

PHP is written inline with HTML documents, making it ideal for people who have experience with designing websites with HTML/CSS and want to create a more dynamic web experience. PHP is processed by the server before it is rendered in the browser.

All of the examples here assume that you have a rudimentary understanding of HTML and have webserver software installed on your system, or access to a webserver with PHP.

The PHP documentation is a valuable resource that should always be open in a seperate tab when you're developing PHP projects.

Hello World!

   <?php echo "Hello world!"; ?>

If you put this code into a file and give it a .php extension, it will render plain text to the web browser. As you can see every piece of PHP must be opened and closed with the PHP html tags.

Date

   <?php
       // variable declaration
       $date = date("Y/m/d");
   
       // using the variable with the echo function
       echo $date;
   ?>

The Date function is a great tool to show how PHP generates dynamic content. The above format displays the full year, the month and day all in numbers like so: 1999/02/16.

Set Up

Linux/BSD

Most package managers have a current version (5.x) of PHP being maintained. Server software needs specific tools to allow PHP to be executed on the system.

Apache

On a Debian based distribution, you must install the Apache webserver, the PHP module and PHP itself.

   sudo apt-get install apache2 libapache2-mod-php5 php5

Nginx

Nginx requires you to have php5-fpm or php5-cgi installed and configured. This will show you how to install and configure php5-fpm with nginx.

Windows

You could, if you're silly, download WAMPserver but that is generally not the best move. However, if you were serious about PHP development you would use a dedicated server.