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PHP (PHP Hypertext Preprocessor) is one of the most popular languages used for web application development.
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First release in 1995 as a Personal Home Page Tool (PHP) by Rasmus Lerdorf
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Offical website www.php.net
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Server Stack Packages
- WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL/MariaDB, PHP),
- LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL/MariaDB, PHP),
- MAMP (Mac, Apache, MySQL/MariaDB, PHP)
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PHP 7 also replaces fatal errors, which previously would crash a program, with exceptions that can be handled within the program itself.
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using Facebook’s HHVM (Hip Hop Virtual Machine) which converts PHP code into C++ code which can then be executed for better performance.
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With the introduction of PHP 8, code is compiled using a JIT (just-in-time) compiler.
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The
@operator, which you may have seen in older PHP code, is removed. -
JavaScript code is downloaded to the user’s computer. It is interpreted and executed within the browser. PHP code resides on a web server. The code is also interpreted and executed, but within the web server, not by the browser.
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There are many web servers that will work with PHP and MySQL/MariaDB databases.
- Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS): www.iis.net/
- Lighttpd: www.lighttpd.net/
- NGINX: www.nginx.com/ (event-driven, good for static pages)
- Apache: www.apache.org/ (process-driven, good for dynamic pages)
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AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) provides the ability to dynamically change portions of a web page without reloading the complete page.