Introduction of PHP - A Server Side Scripting Language

INTRODUCTION OF PHP

·        PHP -  A Server Side Scripting Language

·        What is A PHP File?

·        Why PHP

PHP – A Server Side Scripting Language –

                To introduce the element of dynamism to an HTML page, page content must be extracted from a database table, formatted using HTML as desired, bound to a CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) and dispatched to a Browser that requests the page. PHP does this kind of Web server side work effortlessly.

Since the PHP script executes on the Web Server and produces pure HTML as its output the PHP script is completely opaque to the requesting Browser.

Since the PHP script is never dispatched to a Browser, the script cannot be captured via a Browser’s View Source capabilities. PHP is quite unlike JavaScript. JavaScript can be read / copied / altered using a Browser’s View Source capabilities.

PHP is a parsed language. It required a PHP environment to execute in. Every time a client browser requests a page delivered by PHP code, the Web server invokes the PHP program delivers this to the PHP parser which executes the PHP statements to produce the desired HTML output.

Some PHP attributes are:

·        PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor

·        PHP is a Web server-side scripting language

·        PHP scripts are executed at the Web server. Their output, which is pure HTML is returned to the requesting Browser

·        PHP can connect natively to many database engines such as (MySQL, Oracle, Postgre, SQLite and so on)

·        PHP is Open Source Software (OSS)

·        PHP is totally free of cost to download and use

Why is A PHP File? -

            PHP file content is a mixture of PHP syntax, embedded with standard HTML code spec. When this combination code spec interpreted by the PHP runtime at the Web server, it instructs the Web server exactly what to do to deliver a well formatted HTML page to the requesting Browser.

·        PHP files can contain body text, HTML tags, with HTML styling commands or a binding to an external CSS file and/or JavaScript or a binding to an external JavaScript file.

·        After PHP files are processed, their output which is pure HTML is returned to the Browser.

·        PHP filenames usually have the extension of .php, .php3 or .phtml

Why PHP?

·        PHP runs perfectly on different operating systems such as Windows, Linux, Unix and so on

·        PHP is compatible with almost all Web servers used today (Apeche , IIS and so on)

·        PHP is FREE to download from the official PHP resource: http://www.php.net

·        PHP is easy to learn and runs efficiently and swiftly on any compatible Web server