What will PHP do?

Anything. PHP is principally centered on server-side scripting, thus you will you'll you'll be able to do something the other CGI program can do, like collect type knowledge, generate dynamic page content, or send and receive cookies. however PHP will do far more.

There square measure 3 main square measureas wherever PHP scripts are used. Server-side scripting. this can be the foremost ancient and main target field for PHP. you would like 3 things to form this work. The PHP program (CGI or server module), an internet server and an internet browser. you would like to run the online server, with a connected PHP installation. you'll be able to access the PHP program output with an internet browser, viewing the PHP page through the server. of these will run on your home machine if you're simply experimenting with PHP programming. See the installation directions section for a lot of data.

Command line scripting. you'll be able to create a PHP script to run it with none server or browser. you simply want the PHP program to use it this manner. this sort of usage is right for scripts frequently dead exploitation cron (on *nix or Linux) or Task hardware (on Windows). These scripts can even be used for easy text process tasks. See the section regarding program line usage of PHP for a lot of data.

Writing desktop applications. PHP is maybe not the easiest language to form a desktop application with a graphical programme, however if you recognize PHP alright, and would love to use some advanced PHP options in your client-side applications you'll be able to conjointly use PHP-GTK to put in writing such programs. you furthermore may have the flexibility to put in writing cross-platform applications this manner. PHP-GTK is associate degree extension to PHP, not offered within the main distribution. If you're curious about PHP-GTK, visit » its own web site.

PHP may be used on all major in operation systems, together with UNIX system, several UNIX operating system variants (including HP-UX, Solaris and OpenBSD), Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, RISC OS, and possibly others. PHP has conjointly support for many of the online servers these days. This includes Apache, IIS, and plenty of others. And this includes any net server which will utilize the FastCGI PHP binary, like lighttpd and nginx. PHP works as either a module, or as a CGI processor.

So with PHP, you have got the liberty of selecting associate degree package and an internet server. what is more, you furthermore may have the selection of exploitation procedural programming or object homeward-bound programming (OOP), or a mix of them each.

With PHP you're not restricted to output HTML. PHP's talents includes outputting pictures, PDF files and even Flash movies (using libswf and Ming) generated on the fly. you'll be able to conjointly output simply any text, like XHTML and the other XML file. PHP will autogenerate these files, and save them within the classification system, rather than printing it out, forming a server-side cache for your dynamic content.

One of the strongest and most important options in PHP is its support for a good vary of databases. Writing a info-enabled online page is implausibly straightforward exploitation one in all the database specific extensions (e.g., for mysql), or exploitation associate degree abstraction layer like PDO, or connect with any info supporting the Open info affiliation normal via the ODBC extension. different databases might utilize cURL or sockets, like CouchDB.

PHP conjointly has support for reproval different services exploitation protocols like LDAP, IMAP, SNMP, NNTP, POP3, HTTP, COM (on Windows) and numberless others. you'll be able to conjointly open raw network sockets and move exploitation the other protocol. PHP has support for the WDDX complicated knowledge exchange between nearly all net programming languages. Talking regarding interconnection, PHP has support for mental representation of Java objects and exploitation them transparently as PHP objects.

PHP has helpful text process options, which has the Perl compatible regular expressions (PCRE), and plenty of extensions and tools to analyse and access XML documents. PHP standardizes all of the XML extensions on the solid base of libxml2, and extends the feature set adding SimpleXML, XMLReader and XMLWriter support.

And many different fascinating extensions exist, that square measure classified each alphabetically and by class. And there square measure extra PECL extensions which will or might not be documented inside the PHP manual itself, like» XDebug.

As you'll be able to see this page isn't enough to list all the options and edges PHP offers. browse on within the sections regarding putting in PHP, and see the operate reference half for rationalization of the extensions mentioned here...