Wednesday 11 July 2012

PHP Tutorial From beginner



PHP is a powerful tool for making dynamic and interactive Web pages.
PHP is the widely-used, free, and efficient alternative to competitors such as Microsoft's ASP.
In our PHP tutorial you will learn about PHP, and how to execute scripts on your server
Pre-requisites
Before you continue you should have a basic understanding of the following:
• HTML/XHTML
• JavaScript
What is PHP?
• PHP stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor
• PHP is a server-side scripting language, like ASP
• PHP scripts are executed on the server
• PHP supports many databases (MySQL, Informix, Oracle, Sybase, Solid, PostgreSQL, Generic ODBC, etc.)
• PHP is an open source software
• PHP is free to download and use
What is a PHP File?
• PHP files can contain text, HTML tags and scripts
• PHP files are returned to the browser as plain HTML
• PHP files have a file extension of ".php", ".php3", or ".phtml"
What is MySQL?
• MySQL is a database server
• MySQL is ideal for both small and large applications
• MySQL supports standard SQL
• MySQL compiles on a number of platforms
• MySQL is free to download and use
PHP + MySQL
• PHP combined with MySQL are cross-platform (you can develop in Windows and serve on a Unix platform)
Why PHP?
• PHP runs on different platforms (Windows, Linux, Unix, etc.)
• PHP is compatible with almost all servers used today (Apache, IIS, etc.)
• PHP is FREE to download from the official PHP resource: www.php.net
• PHP is easy to learn and runs efficiently on the server side
Where to Start?
To get access to a web server with PHP support, you can:
• Install Apache (or IIS) on your own server, install PHP, and MySQL
• Or find a web hosting plan with PHP and MySQL support
PHP Installation
What do you need?
Most people would prefer to install a all-in-one solution:
WampServer 2.0i [07/11/09]  for Windows platform Includes : - Apache 2.2.11 - MySQL 5.1.36 - PHP 5.3.0
http://www.wampserver.com/en/
http://lamphowto.com/  for Linux platform
Already have a web server?
If your server supports PHP you don't need to do anything.
Just create some .php files in your web directory, and the server will parse them for you. Because it is free, most web hosts offer PHP support. However, if your server does not
support PHP, you must install PHP. Here is a link to a good tutorial from PHP.net on how to install PHP5:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/install.php
Download PHP
Download PHP for free here: http://www.php.net/downloads.php
Download MySQL Database
Download MySQL for free here: http://www.mysql.com/downloads/index.html
Download Apache Server
Download Apache for free here: http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi
Download a nice text editor [Not required]
http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html
PHP Syntax
PHP code is executed on the server, and the plain HTML result is sent to the browser.
Basic PHP Syntax
A PHP scripting block always starts with <?php and ends with ?>. A PHP scripting block can be placed anywhere in the document.
On servers with shorthand support enabled you can start a scripting block with <? and end with ?>.
For maximum compatibility, we recommend that you use the standard form (<?php) rather than the shorthand form.
<?php ?>
A PHP file normally contains HTML tags, just like an HTML file, and some PHP scripting code.
Below, we have an example of a simple PHP script which sends the text "Hello World" to the browser:
<html> <body> <?php echo "Hello World"; ?> </body> </html>
Each code line in PHP must end with a semicolon. The semicolon is a separator and is used to distinguish one set of instructions from another.
There are two basic statements to output text with PHP: echo and print. In the example above we have used the echo statement to output the text "Hello World".
Note: The file must have a .php extension. If the file has a .html extension, the PHP code will not be executed.
Comments in PHP
In PHP, we use // to make a single-line comment or /* and */ to make a large comment block.
<html> <body> <?php //This is a comment /* This is a comment block */ ?> </body> </html>

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