Php

[onearmpprhngr]

This is going to sound really newbish, but what is PHP? And where can I learn about it? (sites, books, etc)
Thanks

[DrZaius]

Hi onearmpprhngr,

PHP is a web-scripting langauge which, together with HTML, is used to create dynamic web pages. The best place for info. is at the official site:

http://www.php.net/

And you can learn the most from the Intro. Tutorial:

http://www.php.net/tut.php

Hope that helps.

[mairving]

A good book on the subject is called 'PHP and MySQL Web Development' by Luke Welling and Laura Thompson. The book has plenty of code examples and explanations.

Other good sites for PHP are:
http://www.devshed.com/
http://www.phpbuilder.com/
http://www.weberdev.com/
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/
http://www.zend.com/

It is also helpful to download PHP scripts and try to figure out what they are doing with the code. Some scripts are poorly written but you will figure that out too. PHP is not an extremely difficult language to learn. Also keep in mind that many people write PHP in different ways. Some use the print function. Other use echo. There is not much difference other than personal preference. Learn to code without using bloated code.

[Arbzask]

php is recursively short for php hypertext processor. It is a scripting language, similar to asp, that can build pages dynamically using connections to databases. Examples of some pages that are written in PHP, are: this forum, message boards, online shops etc. They are usually interactive. You embed php in a html webpage, within the tags. Whenever your webserver receives a request for a .php or .phtml file, it sends it to the PHP program on the server, which then processes the information, including databasing, and cookies, etc, and spits out a pure html file, which is sent to the users computer. that is why, when you view the source of a .php file on a browser, it just looks like any other html file, without the PHP tags. whereas if you view it on the server (which isnt normally possible client side, it looks like C++. Unlike Javascript, which is client side scripting, PHP is a complex, near C++ programming language, which fully integrates with MySQL and other RDBs on the server. therefore, if you want to create PHP pages, you will need a server running the following programs ( or a compliant host (not like geocities)): Apache (or other server, but apache is good), PHP binaries, and for Dynamic pages, like forums, you will need MySQL or another DB. hope this sorts out the problem

Arbzask

[onearmpprhngr]

Thanks for all the input everyone. It looks like I got my work cut out for me trying to learn about PHP.
PS thanks for the links too.