PHP – A cookie experiment

The following article is the first in a series about PHP. This article covers the basics, and assumes that you have some general knowledge about HTML, and other Web technologies. The articles that will follow includes information on using the Postgresql database with PHP. The third and possibly final article in the series will cover advanced data parsing. That said, let us begin!

Unless you’ve just come back from an extended journey to Alpha Centauri, you may have heard of the World Wide Web (WWW). The WWW is the new communication media of the 20th and 21st centuries, and throughout the Web you cannot help but hear the word, “Dynamic”.

The aggressive momentum as been attributed to several key factors; ease of implementation and integration with the Apache Webserver (which serves more web pages than any other web server made). PHP is also a simple language to learn, and does not have a lot of overhead. For example, to progam the classic “Hello World” example in PHP, you would simply type:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE=PHP>

  print "Hello World!n";
  
</SCRIPT>

Similar to Javascript, PHP code is embedded into the web page. However, this is where the similarity ends. Javascript is a client-side language, therefore relying heavily on the implementation of Javascript/JScript that is supported by your browser. On the other hand, PHP is a server-side language that does not rely on any compilers, interpreters, or plugins for your browser to support it.

More at: http://www.linuxports.com/php_article.lxp