Getting Starting With PHP 7.0

Introduction

I am starting to make a series of articles on PHP 7.0. This is the latest release, and today I will give you a brief description about PHP for beginners. I will start with the history of PHP and move further with some more features with some different methods.

What You Need To Follow This Article

• No previous experience of PHP programming.
• Good knowledge of HTML.
• Knowledge of JavaScript is helpful, but not essential.

What You Need

• Remote Server
• Local testing environments

Why Local Server

• No need to constantly upload scripts for testing.
• Don’t expose your mistakes in public.

What You Need For Coding

• Script Editor
  
  
  • PHP Syntax Checking
  • PHP Syntax Coloring
  • PHP Code Hints
  • Line Numbering
  • A “Balance Braces”feature

Operating System

• PHP is platform neutral.
• It runs on Linux, Mac and Windows.

PHP Version

• This article is based on PHP 7.0
• PHP 6 never publicly released
• Recommended minimum PHP version PHP 5.5
• Official support for PHP 5.4 ended in September 2015
• Most code in this article will run on PHP 5.4

Revised

• Original version was based on PHP 5.3.
• Updated to PHP 7.
• Backward compatible with PHP 5.4 or later.
• No coverage of installing a local PHP server.

Improvements

• Removed discussion of “magic quotes”.
• Simpler array syntax.
• Clearer explanations.
• New chapter on interpreting error messages.
• Challenges and situation.

What PHP Can Do

• Process and email contact forms.
• Upload files from online forms.
• Generate thumbnails from larger images.
• Watermark images.
• Read and write files.
• Do date and time calculations.
• Change content depending on date or time.
• Communicate with database.
• And much, much more.

How PHP Works



Common features in most PHP scripts:

• Variables
• Array
• Loops
• Conditional function
• Function

Using PHP

• Using file extension .PHP

Tags PHP

• Opening tag : <?PHP
• Don’t use <? as the opening tag
• Closing tag is optional

Using PHP

• Storage pages inside the server root folder names:
  
  • Htdocs
  • www
  • wwwroot
  • public-html

Viewing PHP Files Locally

• Don’t double click local files to view form.
• Make sure your local web server is running.
• Always view the page using a URL.