PHP is a wonderful programming language and as you dig deeper into its different aspects, you find more interesting things in store for you. For newcomers, who are looking to get into programming world may wonder in amazement as to why one should learn PHP, what are its benefits and how it helps them. Let us start right from the basics and get a deeper grip into the world of PHP.
PHP stands for “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor”, it is the most common server side language that is used in programming today. It is an open source platform hence it is widely popular, any person can access it through the power of Internet. It is a free access tool to everything PHP online. The reasons and justification for using PHP go far beyond the reasoning fact that it is the language any programmer uses to not only develop their programming skills but using a free implementation. This language can be embedded in HTML. Learning is learner’s passion hence it is highly important to know where to start and how to start.
To start with PHP, one obviously needs PHP installed on their computers where they can write the code. Visual Studio Code is good platform to start with, download and install the program and save it like the way we usually save a notepad document. The extension for PHP file would be .php. Go to Open with > Select Studio Code > Open a Blank template for using. PHP coding always use PHP tags so do not forget them.
The starting of the tag looks like ‘<?php’ (<? This is outdated and hence it may create some problems. To run PHP program, one requires software where they can run it. Most people use Xampp, once you download it, there are some modifications that can be done to make it run smoothly. If no changes are made, Xampp will be saved in C:\ drive of your computer. When you open the file, it will open up many options but save all of your files in ‘htdocs’ folder. When you click on the Run option, you will see two numbers under the ports that appear, the numbers that you can see are 443 plus a second one. We would be considering second number that is displayed. Now open a web browser and type localhost: 801/hello-world.php. You would write the second number where I have put 801. Once you hit the enter button, you will be taken to a white blank page. The next step is to confirm whether the browser that we are currently using is programmed to read PHP tags or not. For this, you will have to open hello-world.php file and in between PHP tags, you have to write “Hello”. To check this on the browser, go to the browser and reload the page.
Finally, now that we have installed PHP, and the way to write its code, we have to start learning how to actually use PHP. There are a number of online resources and books available online, some resources are freely available. There is a lot of information available online to learn so many things, search with keywords like PHP programming, PHP free online resources, mySQL Web development, etc. some programs and books will be quite lengthier than you think, but do not get nervous. Lengthier the pages, the deeper understanding of the programming and the processes they have used. There are ample of books available that will give you good amount of information to learn PHP section wise.
PHP is a smart language, once you dig deeper into it, you shall see how tremendously useful this language is. Sometimes, you may be utterly frustrated if codes do not work what you programmed them for. But, do not give up, scan through online courses, mark different solutions that you get to fix your problem and try again.
