Introduction to PHP

This article gives you an introduction to PHP language. A brief overview of what PHP is and its history along with other details are mentioned. So let’s start:

PHP is a server-side scripting language. PHP processor is open source and can be downloaded without any cost. PHP is an alternative to other server-side scripting languages like CGI (Common Gateway Interface), Active Server Pages (ASP), Java Server Pages (JSP) and ColdFusion.

PHP was developed by Rasmus Lerdorf, a member of the Apache Group, in 1994. It was developed initially for the purpose of tracking the visitors to his personal web site. Most of the binaries were written in C. Lerdorf called the initial PHP as Personal Home Page. But later it was changed to Hypertext PreProcessor.

PHP code is generally embedded within a (X)HTML document. When a client requests a web document containing PHP code, the web server passes it initially to PHP processor. A web server recognizes that a document contains PHP code by the filename extension .php.

The input to a PHP processor is a (X)HTML document along with PHP script and the output is a (X)HTML document which is sent to the client. A client has no clue of the PHP script in the web document.

PHP supports both procedural as well as object oriented programming. PHP is naturally used for form processing and for accessing databases on the server-side. PHP also supports the common mail protocols like POP3 and IMAP. It also supports distributed architectures like COM and CORBA.

Suryateja Pericherla

Suryateja Pericherla, at present is a Research Scholar (full-time Ph.D.) in the Dept. of Computer Science & Systems Engineering at Andhra University, Visakhapatnam. Previously worked as an Associate Professor in the Dept. of CSE at Vishnu Institute of Technology, India.

He has 11+ years of teaching experience and is an individual researcher whose research interests are Cloud Computing, Internet of Things, Computer Security, Network Security and Blockchain.

He is a member of professional societies like IEEE, ACM, CSI and ISCA. He published several research papers which are indexed by SCIE, WoS, Scopus, Springer and others.