INTRO TO PHP

PHP tutorial f or beginners and professionals provides in-depth knowledge of PHP scripting
language. Our PHP tutorial will help you to learn PHP scripting language quickly.

This PHP tutorial covers all the topics of PHP such as introduction, control statements,
f unctions, array, string, file handling, f orm handling, regular expression, date and time,
object-oriented programming in PHP, math, PHP MySQL, PHP with Ajax, PHP with jQuery
and PHP with XML.

What is PHP?
PHP is an open-source, interpreted, and object-oriented scripting language that can be
executed at the server-side. PHP is well suited f or web development. Therefore, it is used to
develop web applications (an application that executes on the server and generates the
dynamic page.).

PHP was created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994 but appeared in the market in 1995. PHP
7.4.0 is the latest version of PHP, which was released on 28 November. Some important
points need to be noticed about PHP are as f ollowed:

o PHP stands f or Hypertext Preprocessor.

o PHP is an interpreted language, i.e., there is no need f or compilation.
o PHP is f aster than other scripting languages, f or example, ASP and JSP.
o PHP is a server-side scripting language, which is use to manage the dynamic content
of the website.
o PHP can be embedded into HTML.
o PHP is an object-oriented language.
o PHP is an open-source scripting language.
o PHP is simple and easy to learn the language.
Why use PHP?
PHP is a server-side scripting language, which is used to design the dynamic web
applications with MySQL database.

o It handles dynamic content, database as well as session tracking f or the website.

o You can create sessions in PHP.
o It can access cookies variable and also set cookies.
o It helps to encrypt the data and apply validation.
o PHP supports several protocols such as HTTP, POP3, SNMP, LDAP, IMAP, and many
more.
o Using PHP language, you can control the user to access some pages of your website.
o As PHP is easy to install and set up, this is the main reason why PHP is the best
language to learn.
o PHP can handle the f orms, such as - collect the data f rom users using f orms, save it
into the database, and return useful inf ormation to the user. For example -
Registration f orm.
PHP Features
PHP is very popular language because of its simplicity and open source. There are some
important f eatures of PHP given below:

Performance:

PHP script is executed much f aster than those scripts which are written in other languages
such as JSP and ASP. PHP uses its own memory, so the server workload and loading time is
automatically reduced, which results in f aster processing speed and better performance.

Open Source:

PHP source code and software are freely available on the web. You can develop all the
versions of PHP according to your requirement without paying any cost. All its components
are f ree to download and use.
Familiarity with syntax:

PHP has easily understandable syntax. Programmers are comfortable coding with it.

Embedded:

PHP code can be easily embedded within HTML tags and script.

Platform Independent:

PHP is available f or WINDOWS, MAC, LINUX & UNIX operating system. A PHP application
developed in one OS can be easily executed in other OS also.

Database Support:

PHP supports all the leading databases such as MySQL, SQLite, ODBC, etc.

Error Reporting -

PHP has predefined error reporting constants to generate an error notice or warning at
runtime. E.g., E_ERROR, E_WARNING, E_STRICT, E_PARSE.

Loosely Typed Language:

PHP allows us to use a variable without declaring its datatype. It will be taken automatically
at the time of execution based on the type of data it contains on its value.

Web servers Support:

PHP is compatible with almost all local servers used today like Apache, Netscape, Microsoft
IIS, etc.

Security:

PHP is a secure language to develop the website. It consists of multiple layers of security to
prevent threads and malicious attacks.

Control:

Dif f erent programming languages require long script or code, whereas PHP can do the same
work in a f ew lines of code. It has maximum control over the websites like you can make
changes easily whenever you want.

A Helpful PHP Community:

It has a large community of developers who regularly updates documentation, tutorials,

online help, and FAQs. Learning PHP f rom the communities is one of the signif icant benef its.
Web Development
PHP is widely used in web development nowadays. PHP can develop dynamic websites
easily. But you must have the basic the knowledge of f ollowing technologies f or web
development as well.

o HTML
o CSS
o JavaScript
o Ajax
o XML and JSON
o jQuery

Hardware Requirements
If you would like to use a dedicated hosting server for running PHPKB Knowledge Base Software or host

Recommended Hardware Specifications

In small instances, server load is primarily driven by peak visitors; however, you may use the following
specifications for optimal performance.

5 Concurrent Users 25 Concurrent Users 50 Concurrent Users

• 1 GHz CPU • Dual 2 GHz CPU • Dual 2.6 GHz CPU

• 2 GB RAM • 4 GB RAM • 8 GB RAM
• 1 GB disk space • 1 GB disk space • 4 GB disk space

Example Hardware Specifications

These are example hardware specifications

User Accounts # Articles CPUs Speed RAM

150 1,000 1 2.6 GHz 1 GB
350 14,000 2 2.8 GHz 1 GB
 User Accounts # Articles CPUs Speed RAM
5,000 15,000 4 3 GHz 4 GB
8,000 17,000 2 3.8 GHz 4 GB
10,000 4,000 2 3.4 GHz 8 GB
21,000 13,000 2 3.6 GHz 8 GB

Maximum Reported Usages

These values are the largest customer instances reported for performance testing. Clustering for load
balancing, database tuning and other performance tuning is recommended for instances exceeding
these values.

• Maximum Number of Internal Users - 1,00,000

• Maximum Number of LDAP Users - 1,00,000 (for enterprise edtions only)
• Maximum number of Knowledge Base Categories - 5,000
• Maximum Number of Knowledge Base Articles - 85,000

Software Requirements
User Requirements

• Operating System: Windows, Mac or Linux

• Web Browser: All industry-standard web browsers (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google
Chrome, Apple Safari)

Web Server Requirements

You need to be running PHP 5.4+ on a web server.

• Operating System: Linux, Unix, Windows

• Web Server: Apache Web Server, LigHTTPD, IIS (with ISAPI_Rewrite installed)
• PHP Version:
o For MySQL & MariaDB Editions, PHP 5.4 or above with PHP XML extension enabled.
o For SQL Server Editions, PHP 5.4 or above with PHP XML extension enabled
and Microsoft SQL Server Driver f or PHP
• Database: MySQL 5.1 or above, MariaDB 10.0 or above, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 or above.
 • Optional Requirements
o Apache's mod_rewrite() extension to allow for SEO friendly URLs.
o PHP LDAP library is required to use LDAP functionality in the Enterprise edition
o AntiWord (f ree) is required to index and search Microsoft Word 2003/XP documents
o ppthtml (free) is required to index and search Microsoft PowerPoint 2003/XP documents
o PHP zip library (free) is required to index and search Microsoft Word/PowerPoint 2007
documents
o pdftohtml (f ree) is required to index and search Adobe PDF documents

Requirement Details

Apache (Recommended)

Microsoft IIS

Disk Space

A minimum base installation requires at least 8MB of disk space but you should assume that your actual
disk space will be somewhat higher. For example, if you upload file attachments and images for articles,
the actual disk space for your knowledge base could easily be 20 MB or more (exclusive of database
content, media, backups and other files).

Browsers

All modern browsers are supported (IE7+, Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, Opera) that support CSS and
JavaScript.