PHP Notes

(http://www.acm.jhu.edu/~jflemer/php/)
By: James Flemer
Presented: 2000-02-03

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Intro

1. What is PHP?
   • PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor
   • server-side HTML-embedded scripting language
   • all functions/commands are enclosed by start (<?php) and end tags (?>)
     start and end tags can be different (see docs Sec 2, Ch 5)
   • dynamic pages
   • database support
     • dBase
     • mSQL
     • MySQL
     • Oracle
     • PostgreSQL (*)
     • dbm
2. Syntax
   • function calls have flexible syntax
   • statements are terminated by a semicolon (;) or a PHP end tag (?>)
   • supports C, C++, and Bourne Shell comments
3. Types
   • PHP supports:
     • integer
     • floating-point numbers
     • string
     • object
     • array
       • act like both hash tables (associative arrays) and indexed arrays (vectors)
       • multi-dimensional arrays
       • make with: array()
       • sort with: asort(), arsort(), ksort(), rsort(), sort(), uasort(), usort(), and uksort()
       • count the number of items with: count()
   • no explicit type declaration (determined by context)
   • casts (see Sec 2, Ch 6, Type Juggling)

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   Dynamic Pages

4. Includes/Requires
   • headers
   • footers
   • embedded docs / tables
   • remote files
   • requires and loops
   • requires and conditionals
5. HTML Forms
   • referencing
   • saving
6. Databases
   • connecting
   • simple queries
   • displaying data in tables
   • complex queries (regex, binary, exact ...)
   • adding rows
7. Security (Note: Not written yet (or ever), email me.)
   • Using .htaccess with Apache
   • Directory security

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Links

• PHP Homepage (http://php.net/)
• PHP Manual (http://php.net/manual/html/manual.html)
• PHP Builder (http://www.phpbuilder.com/)
• phpWizard (http://www.phpwizard.net/)
• PHPLIB: PHP Base Library (http://phplib.netuse.de/)
• More PHP links... (http://php.net/links.php3)
• PostgreSQL (http://postgresql.org/)