PHP

PHP is a highly popular scripting computer programming language that was designed for use on the Web. Computer programming languages are the means by which different pieces of software communicate, both within and between computer systems. As a scripting language, PHP is a programming language that can accept, interpret, and execute a specific command and works with another programming language that codes for an application. From amateur blogs to some of the world’s most sophisticated websites, PHP provides Internet users with quick access—that is, a clean connection to a desired database and the ability to retrieve specific information from that database. In addition, for computer programmers, PHP provides a simple and efficient system for updating information and services within an app or a website.

First introduced in the mid-1990s, PHP had become the fourth most widely used programming language for web development as of 2015, coming in behind Java, Python, and C#. The language has become a standard tool not only for information technicians in businesses, but also for software engineers responsible for developing new apps for user-friendly, interactive services. Indeed, PHP is primarily responsible for assisting in website access and use, most notably in massive global user platforms, such as Facebook or Google, or in major news websites, such as the New York Times, through which millions of information exchanges are routed every day. PHP allows for dynamic content such as video streaming and live news feeds.

Background

PHP, which initially stood for "Personal Home Page Tools," was introduced in 1995 by Rasmus Lerdorf, a Danish Canadian computer engineer and web developer. It grew out of Lerdorf’s collection of code written in the C programming language, and its syntax is related to Perl and Java as well. It was designed to integrate with a website’s preexisting Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) code, which instructs the browser how to present the contents of the website on the user’s screen by defining and setting up the site’s architecture, layout, and formatting. Its compatibility with different programming languages has made it very flexible and portable, thus contributing to its popularity.

Within three years, Lerdorf and other computer scientists developed successive versions of PHP that in turn became one of the widely used tools for website design and development—indeed, the acronym PHP had to be extended. Starting in 1998, with the release of version 3.0, PHP came to stand for "PHP Hypertext Preprocessor" to suggest the wide applications of the language. Because PHP is free to users and developers and because the language itself is comparatively easy to learn even for those without extensive computer science backgrounds, the language has become an established and important tool in the industry.

Impact

Compared to other critical computer language tools, such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) or JavaScript, which are largely responsible for the aesthetics of a web page, PHP is the vital workhorse of a website’s front end. PHP basically makes websites that both companies and customers rely on user-friendly. When a user clicks the cursor, there is the expectation that information will be retrieved and displayed, quickly and correctly, from the vast databases located in a local computer system or a website’s remote server. The server is the hardware responsible for listening for and then fielding a response to requests from users’ computers, known as the "clients."

PHP is defined as a server-side scripting language. It interacts with the website’s vast resources of data on the server, selects the particular data being requested, retrieves it, and sends it to the client. The client system then displays it on the user’s computer. PHP allows work with stored data—when website designers want to add information or expand the data range to an existing file, they use PHP; when a user types in the appropriate keywords into a search engine and hits submit, that person uses PHP. Because PHP interprets data received on the server side, rather than the client side, the language provides data requested without compromising the security systems in place in the client side. It also allows websites to create new content based on user data and to collect information from visitors, thus facilitating interactivity.

Although PHP is an imperative language—that is, it lays out specific sequences of tasks for the computer to accomplish—over time, PHP has also evolved to allow for object-oriented programming (OOP). In OOP, blocks of code are treated as a single unit, or "object," that has defined states and behaviors and that can be easily added, deleted, or repurposed. Thus, OOP makes it easier for developers to share code.

Bibliography

Lengstorf, Jason, and Thomas Blom Hansen. PHP for Absolute Beginners. 2nd ed. New York: Apress, 2014. Print.

Lerdorf, Rasmus. "Why the Father of PHP Doesn’t Like Programming." Interview by Christina Farr. Venture Beat. Venture Beat, 13 Nov. 2013. Web. 16 Aug. 2016.

Lerdorf, Rasmus, Kevin Tatroe, and Peter MacIntyre. Programming PHP: Creating Dynamic Web Pages. 3rd ed. Sebastopol: O’Reilly Media, 2013. Print.

Lockhart, Josh. Modern PHP: New Features and Good Practices. Sebastopol: O’Reilly Media, 2015. Print.

Lopez, Antonio. Learning PHP 7. Birmingham: Packt, 2016. Print.

"PHP Introduction." Geeks for Geeks, 5 Sept. 2024, www.geeksforgeeks.org/php-introduction/. Accessed 21 Nov. 2024.

Powers, David. PHP Solutions: Dynamic Web Design Made Easy. 3rd ed. New York: Apress, 2014. Print.

Sklar, David, and Adam Trachtenberg. PHP Cookbook: Solutions & Examples for PHP Programmers. 3rd ed. Sebastopol: O’Reilly Media, 2014. Print.

Zandstra, Matt. PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice. 4th ed. New York: Apress, 2013. Print.