PHP - scripting language for producing dynamic web pages

PHP is a very popular scripting language for dynamic web pages creation. It is capable of a command line interface and can be used in independent graphical applications. PHP is an abbreviation for “Hypertext Preprocessor”. It is a server-side scripting language set in HTML and its main purpose is to generate dynamic web pages very quickly. Its syntax possesses some of the characteristics of C, Java and Perl, but it also has some new ones as well.

In an HTML page, PHP code is surrounded with special PHP tags. When the page is opened, the server manipulates the PHP code and forwards the output to the visitor’s browser. Here there is no risk of someone taking your PHP script away as it is the case with JavaScript.

PHP is perfectly compatible with most databases such as MySQL, Informix, Oracle, Sybase, PostgreSQL, and Generic ODBC. One of the most widely-used combinations consisting of open-source products is PHP-MySQL. It is obtainable on most UNIX hosts. With PHP you can execute whatever activities you like on the Internet - connect to remote servers, encode url, redirect, check email via POP3 or IMAP.

PHP is not a complicated language. Most of its syntax is derived from C with the exception of variables processing. The types of the variables should not worry you. You should rather operate with their values. Besides, do not assert variables until you use them.
PHP is free software. Bear in mind that it is not consistent with GPL because there are limitations on the PHP abbreviation use.

PHP operates on a web server. It uses PHP code as an input and generates web pages as an output. It is excellent for command-line scripting and client-side GUI applications as well. It is possible to implement PHP on almost all web servers and operating systems. Besides, it is compatible with numerous relational database management systems. Among its advantages are that it is free and that the PHP Group supplies a finished source code for users to generate, adjust and expand for their own purposes.

PHP is usually written only as P in the package next to Linux, Apache and MySQL. However, P may stand for Python or Perl too.

Like many other scripting languages, PHP scripts are maintained as legible source code, including on generation web servers. Hence, PHP scripts are composed at a runtime by the PHP engine. This, on its part, ads to the operation time of the script. PHP scripts can be composed before runtime via PHP compilers as it is with other programming languages like C (the language in which PHP is programmed in and which serves for PHP extensions programming).

The quality of the composed code is enhanced through code optimizers. They decrease its size and perform modifications which can lead to operation time decrease and performance enhancement. The PHP compiler allows for frequent code optimizations. A type of a code optimizer is the Zend Optimizer PHP extension.

PHP language can become more functional if PHP developers create extensions in C which can subsequently be assembled into PHP or loaded dynamically at runtime. For example, extensions have been created to provide support for the Windows API, process control on Unix-like operating systems, multibyte strings (Unicode) and widespread compression formats. Among the uncommon characteristics are inclusion in Internet relay chat, dynamic creation of images and Adobe Flash content, as well as speech synthesis. Zend offers a certification program so programmers can turn into certified PHP developers.