PHP

What is PHP?

PHP is a server side scripting language. that is used to develop Static websites or Dynamic websites or Web applications. PHP stands for Hypertext Pre-processor, that earlier stood for Personal Home Pages.

PHP scripts can only be interpreted on a server that has PHP installed.

The client computers accessing the PHP scripts.

A PHP file can also contain tags such as HTML and client side scripts such as JavaScript.

• HTML is an added advantage when learning PHP Language. You can even learn PHP without knowing HTML but it’s recommended you at least know the basics of HTML.
• Database management systems DBMS for database powered applications.
• For more advanced topics such as interactive applications and web services, you will need JavaScript and XML.

The flowchart diagram shown below illustrates the basic architecture of a PHP web application and how the server handles the requests.

Why use PHP?

You have obviously heard of a number of programming languages out there; you may be wondering why we would want to use PHP as our poison for the web programming. Below are some of the compelling reasons.

• PHP is open source and free.
• Short learning curve compared to other languages such as JSP, ASP etc.
• Large community document
• Most web hosting servers support PHP by default unlike other languages such as ASP that need IIS. This makes PHP a cost effective choice.
• PHP is regular updated to keep abreast with the latest technology trends.
• Other benefit that you get with PHP is that it’s a server side scripting language; this means you only need to install it on the server and client computers requesting for resources from the server do not need to have PHP installed; only a web browser would be enough.
• PHP has in built support for working hand in hand with MySQL; this doesn’t mean you can’t use PHP with other database management systems. You can still use PHP with
• Postgres
• Oracle
• MS SQL Server
• ODBC etc.
• PHP is cross platform; this means you can deploy your application on a number of different operating systems such as windows, Linux, Mac OS etc.