Introduction to

Server-Side
Development with
PHP
Chapter 8

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

Textbook to be published by Pearson ©
Ed2015
in early
Pearson
2014
Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development
http://www.funwebdev.com
 Objectives
1 Server-Side
Development 2 Web Server’s
Responsibilitie
s

3 Quick Tour of
PHP 4 Program
Control

5 Functions

7
Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development
 Section 1 of 5
WHAT IS SERVER-SIDE DEVELOPMENT

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 What is Server-Side Development

The basic hosting of your files is achieved through a

web server.
Server-side development is much more than web
hosting: it involves the use of a programming
technology like PHP or ASP.NET to create scripts that
dynamically generate content
Consider distinction between client side and server
side…

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Comparing Client and Server Scripts

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Server-Side Script
Resources
So many tools in your kit

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Web Development Technologies

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Comparing Server-Side Technologies

• ASP (Active Server Pages).

• JSP (Java Server Pages).
• Perl
• Python.
• Node.js
• PHP.
• Ruby on Rails.

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Comparing Server-Side Technologies

• Like ASP, PHP is a dynamically typed language that can be

embedded directly within the HTML, though it now supports
most common object-oriented features, such as classes and
inheritance. By default, PHP pages are compiled into an
intermediary representation called opcodes that are
analogous to Java’s byte-code or the .NET Framework’s MSIL.
Originally, PHP stood for personal home pages, although it
now is a recursive acronym that means PHP: Hypertext
Processor.

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development
 Market Share
Of web development environments

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Section 2 of 5
WEB SERVER’S RESPONSABILITIES

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 A Web Server’s Responsibilities

A web server has many responsibilities:

• handling HTTP connections
• responding to requests for static and dynamic resources
• managing permissions and access for certain resources
• encrypting and compressing data
• managing multiple domains and URLs
• managing database connections
• managing cookies and state
• uploading and managing files

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 LAMP stack
WAMP, MAMP, …

You will be using the LAMP software stack

• Linux operating system
• Apache web server
• MySQL DBMS
• PHP scripting language

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Apache and Linux
LA

Consider the Apache web server as the intermediary

that interprets HTTP requests that arrive through a
network port and decides how to handle the request,
which often requires working in conjunction with PHP.

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Apache
Continued

Apache runs as a daemon on the server. A daemon is

an executing instance of a program (also called a
process) that runs in the background, waiting for a
specific event that will activate it.
When a request arrives, Apache then uses modules to
determine how to respond to the request.
In Apache, a module is a compiled extension (usually
written in the C programming language) to Apache
that helps it handle requests. For this reason, these
modules are also sometimes referred to as handlers.

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Apache and PHP
PHP Module in Apache

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 PHP Internals
PHP itself is written in C

There are 3 main modules

1. PHP core. The Core module defines the main
features of the PHP environment, including
essential functions for variable handling, arrays,
strings, classes, math, and other core features.
2. Extension layer. This module defines functions for
interacting with services outside of PHP. This
includes libraries for MySQL, FTP, SOAP web
services, and XML processing, among others.
3. Zend Engine. This module handles the reading in of
a requested PHP file, compiling it, and executing it.

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Zend Engine
No, your code is not garbage.

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Installing LAMP locally
Turn this key

The easiest and quickest way to do so is to use the

• XAMPP For Windows installation package
• MAMP for Mac installation package
Both of these installation packages install and
configure Apache, PHP, and MySQL.
.

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 XAMPP Control Panel
Turn this key

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 XAMPP Settings
Defaults are

• PHP requests in your browser will need to use the

localhost domain (127.0.0.1)
• PHP files will have to be saved somewhere within
the C:\xampp\htdocs folder

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Section 3 of 5

QUICK TOUR OF PHP

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development
 Quick Tour

• PHP, like JavaScript, is a dynamically typed

language.
• it uses classes and functions in a way consistent
with other object-oriented languages such as C++,
C#, and Java
• The syntax for loops, conditionals, and assignment
is identical to JavaScript
• Differs when you get to functions, classes, and in
how you define variables

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 PHP Tags

The most important fact about PHP is that the

programming code can be embedded directly within
an HTML file.
• A PHP file will usually have the extension .php
• programming code must be contained within an
opening <?php tag and a matching closing ?> tag
• any code outside the tags is echoed directly out to
the client

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 PHP Tags

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 HTML and PHP
Two approaches

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 HTML and PHP
Two approaches

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 PHP Comments
3 kinds

The types of comment styles in PHP are:

• Single-line comments. Lines that begin with a # are
comment lines and will not be executed.
• Multiline (block) comments. These comments
begin with a /* and encompass everything that is
encountered until a closing */ tag is found.
• End-of-line comments. Whenever // is encountered
in code, everything up to the end of the line is
considered a comment.

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 PHP Comments
3 kinds

<?php
# single-line comment
/*
This is a multiline comment.
They are a good way to document functions or
complicated blocks of code
*/
$artist = readDatabase(); // end-of-line comment
?>

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Variables

Variables in PHP are dynamically typed.

Variables are also loosely typed in that a variable can
be assigned different data types over time
To declare a variable you must preface the variable
name with the dollar ($) symbol.

$count = 42;

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Data Types
Data Type Description

A logical true or false value

Boolean
Whole numbers
Integer
Decimal numbers
Float
Letters
String
A collection of data of any type (covered in the next chapter)
Array
Instances of classes
Object
Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development
 Constants

A constant is somewhat similar to a variable, except a

constant’s value never changes . . . in other words it
stays constant.
• Typically defined near the top of a PHP file via the
define() function
• once it is defined, it can be referenced without
using the $ symbol

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Constants

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Writing to Output
Hello World

To output something that will be seen by the browser,

you can use the echo() function.
echo ("hello"); //long form
echo "hello"; //shortcut

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 String Concatenation
Easy

Strings can easily be appended together using the

concatenate operator, which is the period (.) symbol.
$username = ”World";
echo "Hello". $username;

Will Output Hello World

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 String Concatenation
Example

$firstName = "Pablo";
$lastName = "Picasso";
/*
Example one:
These two lines are equivalent. Notice that you can reference
PHP variables within a string literal defined with double
quotes. The resulting output for both lines is: <em>Pablo
Picasso</em>
*/
echo "<em>" . $firstName . " ". $lastName. "</em>";
echo "<em> $firstName $lastName </em>";

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 String Concatenation
Example

/*
Example two:
These two lines are also equivalent. Notice that you
can use either the single quote symbol or double quote
symbol for string literals.
*/
echo "<h1>";
echo '<h1>';

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 String Concatenation
Example

/*
Example three:
These two lines are also equivalent. In the second
example, the escape character (the backslash) is used
to embed a double quote within a string literal defined
within double quotes.
*/
echo '<img src="23.jpg" >';
echo "<img src=\"23.jpg\" >";

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 String escape Sequences

Sequence Description

\n Line feed

\t Horizontal tab

\\ Backslash

\$ Dollar sign

\" Double quote

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Complicated
Concatenation
echo "<img src='23.jpg' alt='". $firstName . " ". $lastName . "' >";
echo "<img src='$id.jpg' alt='$firstName $lastName' >";
echo "<img src=\"$id.jpg\" alt=\"$firstName $lastName\" >";
echo '<img src="' . $id. '.jpg" alt="' . $firstName . ' ' . $lastName . '" >';
echo '<a href="artist.php?id=' .$id .'">' .$firstName .' ' . $lastName .'</a>';

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Illustrated Example

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 PrintF
Good ol’ printf

As an alternative, you can use the printf() function.

• derived from the same-named function in the C
programming language

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 PrintF
Illustrated example

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 PrintF
Type specifiers

Each placeholder requires the percent (%) symbol in

the first parameter string followed by a type specifier.
• b for binary
• d for signed integer
• f for float
• o for octal
• x for hexadecimal

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 PrintF
Precision

Precision allows for control over how many decimal

places are shown. Important for displaying calculated
numbers to the user in a “pretty” way.
Precision is achieved in the string with a period (.)
followed by a number specifying how many digits
should be displayed for floating-point numbers.

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Section 4 of 5

PROGRAM CONTROL
Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development
 If…else

The syntax for conditionals in PHP is almost identical to

that of JavaScript

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 If…else
Alternate syntax

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Switch…case
Nearly identical

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 While and Do..while
Identical to other languages

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 For
Identical to other languages

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Alternate syntax for Control
Structures

PHP has an alternative syntax for most of its control

structures. In this alternate syntax
• the colon (:) replaces the opening curly bracket,
• while the closing brace is replaced with endif;,
endwhile;, endfor;, endforeach;, or endswitch;

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Include Files
Organize your code

PHP does have one important facility that is generally

unlike other nonweb programming languages, namely
the ability to include or insert content from one file
into another.

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Include Files
Organize your code

PHP provides four different statements for including

files, as shown below.
include "somefile.php";
include_once "somefile.php";
require "somefile.php";
require_once "somefile.php";
With include, a warning is displayed and then
execution continues. With require, an error is
displayed and execution stops.

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 The include_once and require_once statements work
just like include and require but if the requested file
has already been included once, then it will not be
included again.

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Section 5 of 5

FUNCTIONS
Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development
 Functions
You mean we don’t write everything in main?

Just as with any language, writing code in the main

function (which in PHP is equivalent to coding in the
markup between <?php and ?> tags) is not a good
habit to get into.
A function in PHP contains a small bit of code that
accomplishes one thing. In PHP there are two types of
function: user-defined functions and built-in functions.
1. A user-defined function is one that you the
programmer define.
2. A built-in function is one of the functions that
come with the PHP environment

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Functions
syntax

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Functions
No return – no big deal.

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Call a function

Now that you have defined a function, you are able to

use it whenever you want to. To call a function you must
use its name with the () brackets.
Since getNiceTime() returns a string, you can assign that
return value to a variable, or echo that return value
directly, as shown below.
$output = getNiceTime();
echo getNiceTime();
If the function doesn’t return a value, you can just call
the function:
outputFooterMenu();

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Parameters

Parameters are the mechanism by which values are

passed into functions.
To define a function with parameters, you must decide
• how many parameters you want to pass in,
• and in what order they will be passed
• Each parameter must be named

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Parameters

Thus to call our function, you can now do it in two ways:

echo getNiceTime(1); // this will print seconds

echo getNiceTime(0); // will not print seconds

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Parameter Default Values

Now if you were to call the function with no values, the

$showSeconds parameter would take on the default value, which we
have set to 1, and return the string with seconds.

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Pass Parameters by Value

By default, arguments passed to functions are passed

by value in PHP. This means that PHP passes a copy of
the variable so if the parameter is modified within the
function, it does not change the original.

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Pass Parameters by Reference

PHP also allows arguments to functions to be passed

by reference, which will allow a function to change the
contents of a passed variable.
The mechanism in PHP to specify that a parameter is
passed by reference is to add an ampersand (&)
symbol next to the parameter name in the function
declaration

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Value vs Reference

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Variable Scope in
functions
All variables defined within a function (such as parameter
variables) have function scope, meaning that they are only
accessible within the function.
Any variables created outside of the function in the main
script are unavailable within a function.
$count= 56;
function testScope() {
echo $count; // outputs 0 or generates run-time
//warning/error
}
testScope();
echo $count; // outputs 56

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 Global variables
Sometimes unavoidable

Variables defined in the main script are said to have

global scope.
Unlike in other programming languages, a global
variable is not, by default, available within functions.
PHP does allow variables with global scope to be
accessed within a function using the global keyword

Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development

 What You’ve Learned
1 Server-Side
Development 2 Web Server’s
Responsabilitie
s

3 Quick Tour of
PHP 4 Program
Control

5 Functions

7
Randy Connolly and Ricardo Hoar Fundamentals of Web Development