PHP is a general-purpose scripting language that is used in Web development. Through PHP, you can create dynamic web pages that can be viewed by people over the World Wide Web.

PHP is short for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. IT is created and licensed by the PHP Group but it is considered to be free software by the Free Software Foundation. When your browser opens a PHP-enabled web site, the pages are treated just like regular HTML pages and you can create and edit them the same way you normally create regular HTML pages. PHP runs on a web server. When you create a web page using PHP, you enter a PHP code as your input and the output is the created web page. You can use PHP on almost every operating system and platform including: PHP can be used on all major operating systems, including Linux, many Unix variants (including HP-UX, Solaris and OpenBSD), Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, RISC OS.

PHP has also support for most of the web servers today. This includes Apache, Microsoft Internet Information Server, Personal Web Server, Netscape and iPlanet servers, Oreilly Website Pro server, Caudium, Xitami, OmniHTTPd.

PHP uses procedural programming or object oriented programming, or a mixture of them. PHP is used mainly in server-side scripting; command line interface and writing desktop application.

Server-side scripting is the most traditional use for PHP. To use PHP for server-side scripting you need a PHP parser, a web server and a web browser. You enter PHP codes with the parser on a web server and it is translated into a PHP page that you can view on your web browser.

However, it is also possible to make PHP script run without a server or browser. All you need is a PHP parser. This type of usage is ideal for scripts regularly executed using cron (on *nix or Linux) or Task Scheduler (on Windows). These scripts can also be used for simple text processing tasks.

While PHP is not the best language to use when writing a desktop application, it is possible. With PHP you can create a desktop application with a graphical user interface. If one is familiar with PHP and would like to use its features, there is PHP-GTK. With PHP-GTK you also have the ability to write cross-platform applications this way. However, PHP-GTK is an extension to regular PHP and not available in the main distribution.

While PHP websites are treated by web browsers as ordinary HTML pages, they are superior from regular websites in the sense that they have more features.

With PHP you are not limited to output HTML. PHP allows for the outputting of images, PDF files and even Flash movies. You can also output text in almost any form such as XHTML and any other XML file. PHP auto generates these files, and saves them in the file system, instead of printing it out. This forms a server-side cache for your dynamic content.

PHP supports a wide range of databases including Adabas D, InterBase, Postgre SQL, dBase, FrontBase,SQLite, Empress, mSQL, Solid, FilePro, Direct MS-SQL, Sybase, Hyperwave, MySQL, Velocis, IBM DB@, ODBC, Unix dbm, Informix, Oracle, Ingress and Ovrimos. PHP also supports ODBC, the Open Database Connection standard which allows you to connect to any other database supporting this world standard. PHP also has support for talking to other services using protocols such as LDAP, IMAP, SNMP, NNTP, POP3, HTTP, COM (on Windows) and countless others. You can also open raw network sockets and interact using any other protocol.

PHP has support for the WDDX complex data exchange between virtually all Web programming languages. PHP also has support for instantiation of Java objects and using them transparently as PHP objects. PHP has text processing features. For parsing and accessing XML documents, PHP 4 supports the SAX and DOM standards, and you can also use the XSLT extension to transform XML documents. PHP 5 standardizes all the XML extensions on the solid base of libxml2 and extends the feature set adding SimpleXML and XMLReader support. Between its functionality and its ease of use PHP is one of the best ways for anyone- be they a beginner or a veteran - to create a dynamic and interactive website to share with users of the World Wide Web.

About the Author

Mikhail Tuknov, a Search Engine Optimization Specialist, can improve search engine ranking of your online business. SEO specialist providing search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC) management, web site design or development and web analytics services.