PHP Night

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PHP Night

• March 29, 2005
• by Nick Barrett

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What is PHP?

• Stands for Pre-hypertext processor
• Primarily a server-side programming language
  (also command-line)
• Available on nearly every platform
• Integrates well with a variety of webs servers
  (Apache, Microsoft IIS, etc.)
• Open-source project started in 1994.
• Became popular with version 3.0 (now at 5.03)

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Why learn PHP?

• Named the 2004 programming language of the year!
• http//www.tiobe.com/tpci.htm

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Designed for web development

• "PHP was built with the needs of Web developers
  in mind... Unlike other cumbersome,
  overhead-laden approaches, PHP is lightweight and
  focused on the Web - where it can solve complex
  problem scenarios quicker and more easily than
  comparable technologies.
• - Intranet Design Magazine

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Advantages of PHP

• Extremely quick development
• If it takes about 3 months to code a web
  application in C, then using PHP you can
  develop the same web application in just 4 days!!
  And with Zend optimizer, the speed of execution
  of PHP will be very close to that of equivalent
  C program!!
• Well-documented
• Large libraries and repositories of code, free to
  share
• Very fast execution (considered the fastest
  scripting language)
• Interacts with nearly any database
• Oracle, dBase, FrontBase, PostgreSQL, FilePro,
  mSQL, MS-SQL, Sybase, IBM DB2, MySQL, ODBC,
  basically anything!

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Disadvantages of PHP

• Error-handling
• Debugging
• Older versions have only partial support of
  object-oriented features
• No client-side processing

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Syntax

• C-style language
• If youve done Java, C, or JavaScript
  programming, you will find it very easy.

lt?php include("dbconnect.php") photoID
trim(HTTP_GET_VARS'photoID') rs
mysql_query("select from photos where photoID
'".photoID."'") row mysql_fetch_array(rs)
del_orig unlink(row'original') del_res
ized unlink(row'resized') del_thumbnail
unlink(row'thumbnail') if(del_orig
del_resized del_thumbnail) rs2
mysql_query("delete from photos where photoID
'".photoID."'") echo 'ltscript
language"JavaScriptgt' echo
' history.go(-1)' echo 'lt/scriptgt' ?gt
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Data types

• There are 8 primitive data types
• Boolean (true/false)
• Integer (3, 5, 1242)
• Float (0.32, 3.14259)
• String (ASM, Marriott School)
• Array (5, 3, 5, Apples, 5, true)
• Object
• Resource
• NULL

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Objects

• lt?phpclass Cart    var items  // Items in
  our shopping cart   // Add num articles of
  artnr to the cart   function add_item(artnr,
  num)        this-gtitemsartnr num  
     // Take num articles of artnr out of the
  cart   function remove_item(artnr, num)     
    if (this-gtitemsartnr gt num)           
  this-gtitemsartnr - num           return
  true       elseif (this-gtitemsartnr
  num)            unset(this-gtitemsartnr)  
          return true       else           
  return false         
• ?gt

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Variables

• PHP does not require explicit type definition
  when declaring variablesthe type is determined
  by the context!
• Very useful when creating code and reusing
  variables
• lt?php
• foo "0"  // foo is string
• foo 2   // foo is now an integer (2)
• foo foo 1.3  // foo is now a float
• foo true // foo is now a boolean
• foo array(4, 2, 5) // foo is now an array!
• ?gt

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Control structures

• If/Else statements
• For loops
• While loops
• For each loops
• Switch statements

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Processing web-based data

• List of global variables from phpinfo()
• http//128.187.110.210/info.php
• GET and POST arrays
• _GET is a global array of variables passed in
  via the URL (page.php?variablevalue)
• _POST is a global array created by the web
  server when a form is sent via the POST method

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Development Environments

• Dreamweaver MX 2004
• Eclipse 3.0
• PHP Coder
• Notepad
• Lots of other free and commercial products.

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Examples

• Hello world
• Form handling
• Interacting with a MySQL database
• Authentication system (sessions)
• Advanced topics
• Content management systems
• Object-oriented design
• Image editing

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Online Resources

• THE place to go www.php.net/docs.php
• Installing PHP 4 with Apache on Windows
• Installing PHP 5 with Apache 2.0 on Windows
• Great overall tutorial on getting started with
  beginning/intermediate PHP

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Books