PHP Scripting Fundamentals

PHP is one of the most used languages on the web. The vast majority of websites you visit are built with PHP on the back-end, and knowing PHP is a requirement for writing plugins or themes for a CMS like Word Press Joomla. PHP is fast, but even better, it's easy to learn and easy to use for writing web applications. Or we can say that 

PHP's primary use is as an “embedded” scripting language, which means that the actual PHP code is embedded in HTML code. When used in this way, PHP enables your web server to process web pages before they're displayed in the user's web browser.

The PHP Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) is a programming language that allows web developers to create dynamic content that interacts with databases. PHP is free and open-source and works with all major operating systems, which is why most companies use it (Facebook, Google, and so on). PHP is faster than other scripting languages, for example, ASP and JSP. PHP is a server-side scripting language, which is used to manage the dynamic content of the website of interactive web pages.

PHP performs system functions, i.e. from files on a system it can create, open, read, write, and close them. The other uses of PHP are:

• PHP can handle forms, i.e. gather data from files, save data to a file.
• Through an email, you can send data, return data to the user.
• You add, delete, modify elements within your database through PHP language.
• Easily access cookies variables and set cookies via the web browser.
• Using PHP, you can restrict users to access some pages of your website.
• It can encrypt data to secure data to access unauthorized access.

Characteristics of PHP

Five important characteristics make PHP's is

Simplicity, Efficiency, Security, Flexibility, Familiarity.

Php is a case-sensitive language. Capital and small letters have a different meaning as a variable. For example 'Myvariable'  and 'myvariable' have two different variables. 

To develop and run PHP Web pages, the main components need to be installed on your computer. Web Server is Apache Server, Use a database as MySQL database.

The basic tag is <?php …. ?>