What is PHP?

PHP is a server side scripting language which is used for developing dynamic websites or web applications. Initially, PHP had been created as a simple scripting platform which is known as Personal Home Page. Now it is being a recursive acronym for Hypertext Preprocessor as it an HTML-embedded Web scripting language which means PHP code can be included with the HTML of a website. While a PHP page is used, then the PHP code will be read by the server and resides on whereas the output of the PHP functions will be return in the form of HTML code which can be read by the browser. The PHP functions were returned in the form of HTML code because before the page loaded the PHP code gets transformed into HTML. This process makes the PHP pages secure for accessing databases and other secure information.

The basic syntax of PHP language

A PHP script can be insert anyplace in the text and it begins with . In the PHP file, HTML tags and PHP scripting code were included. The basic syntax of the PHP code is as follows.

<?php

// PHP code

?>

In the PHP code, the statement written after “//” this denotes it is a comment. A comment in the PHP code is a line which is not executes when run the program as their purpose only to read just for understanding the code.

Uses of the PHP programming language

  • PHP is an open source server-side scripting language and it is used by the developers for the development of web applications.
  • PHP is free to download and use. PHP were designed to work with HTML as it can be embedded with HTML code.
  • The PHP files may include text, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP code and the PHP files have to be saved with the extension “.php”.
  • PHP code need to be enclosed with the PHP tags in order to identify them from the HTML code.
  • PHP is widely used as it can run on various platforms such as Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, UNIX, etc. and it is compatible with most of the servers which are used in current like Apache, IIS, etc.
  • PHP is used for connecting the web page with a database.
  • By making use of can able to restrict user to access specific web page.

Applications of the PHP programming language

Nowadays most of the web pages and web-based applications were developed using PHP as they require a three-tiered architecture that works on browser, server and database system and these features can be achieved with PHP. PHP supports number of databases also it can interact with other services using protocols and this used for creating web content management system. PHP is highly supportive for small businesses to large enterprises as it is used for the creation of e-commerce applications. Also it is used for creating desktop graphical user interface (GUI) based applications. Likewise it is widely used all over the world by the developers in various applications.