PHP introduction

PHP stands for hypertext preprocessor.

PHP is a powerful tool for making dynamic and interactive Web pages.
PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into is the widely-used, free, and efficient alternative to competitors such as Microsoft's ASP HTML.

Features and Advantages of Php Development

The main features of the PHP scripting language include the following:

Open Source

PHP is an open source language and is freely available for use. The community of open source PHP developers provides technical support and is constantly improving updating the core PHP functionalities. The PHP Extension and Application Repository system provides and maintains a library of PHP code packages that are available for use. The packages can include functions such as authentication, caching, destructors, encryption, error handling etc.

Compatability
PHP provides high compatibility with leading operating systems and web servers such as thereby enabling it to be easily deployed across several different platforms.

File Handling
PHP be used to read text and generate files in various formats such as PDF and XML. Using the file manipulation functions, files and documents can be uploaded and stored on the server. The uploaded documents can be accessed and manipulated through PHP code. PHP can be used to access flat files and perform basic file and directory maintenance tasks thereby enabling files/documents to be edited remotely.

Improved Performance
The PHP complier includes features to optimize and improve the quality of compiled code by reducing the size execution time of the code thereby leading to improved performance. The compiled PHP code can be cached using various PHP accelerators such as xcache, eAccelerator etc thereby reducing time spent in parsing and compiling the code every time.

Debuggers
Several debuggers are available with PHP enabling developers to identify and analyze the code for potential bugs and bottlenecks.

Sessions
PHP provides extensive session and cookie management features and functions enabling the creation and development of personalized web pages.

Graphics
PHP can be used to generate images and graphics dynamically. Using the image functionalities available with PHP, the header information of images an be accessed and manipulated. The GD library of PHP includes a host of features and functionalities that can be used to create images in various formats such as gif, jpeg and png.

Extensible
The source code of PHP can be modified to include custom created extensions and components thereby increasing its extensibility.

ADVANTAGES:

PHP application development offers the following benefits and advantages over application development in other server side scripting languages:

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PHP is available under the open source license thereby making it a cost effective option.
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Speeds the load time and improves browsing experience as processing happens on the server.
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Major open source packages are written in PHP thereby enabling easy customization and development.
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Compatible with all major operating systems, web servers and browsers.
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Includes a host of in-built features that simplify programming of common tasks.
• Corporate websites
• Intranet applications
• Real estate portals

Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) is a cross platform open source server side scripting language that can be used to generate dynamic and interactive web pages. PHP scripts or codes can be embedded within HTML pages. When a request is sent for a PHP page, the server parses and executes the code and returns the output as plain HTML. PHP scripts can be written to interact with databases and include a host of database connectivity features providing support for a wide range of platforms such as MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL etc. PHP can be used to create web applications ranging from personal websites to e-commerce applications and community web portals i.e. disucssion forums, blogs etc. Apart from web applications and server side scripting, PHP can be used for command-line scripting and client-side GUI application development.

PHP is based on an Object Oriented Architecture and most of its features, concepts and syntax are based on the C and Perl programming languages. Being an open source language, a large number of libraries and extensions, to extend its core functionalities, are available for download. PHP extensions include support for features such as XML parsing, compression utilities, dynamic generation of images, translation functions etc.

PHP scripts can run across operating systems such as Linux, Windows, Solaris, OpenBSD, Mac OSX etc and also provide support for all major web servers such as Apache, IIS, iPlanet etc.