Introduction to PHP for Web Development:
Hands-On

Introduction to PHP

Web services architectures and PHP

• Origins of PHP in the open source community
• Exploring the PHP application architecture
• Investigating the PHP role in Web services architecture
• Leveraging the PHP development environment checklist
• Installing a complete development platform from scratch

PHP language basics

• Defining PHP language conventions
• Investigating PHP variable and data types
• Exploring the use of constants
• Examining classes and objects

Implementing PHP Code

Accommodating transient data

• Storing values in scalar variables
• Employing ordinary and associative arrays
• Accessing global variables
• Embedding PHP code into HTML pages

PHP expressions and functions

• Writing user-defined functions to structure your code
• Passing arguments and default values to functions
• Returning data from functions
• Building code libraries for reusability
• Incorporating external PHP scripts with require and require_once

Employing PHP code in your environment

• Writing conditional expressions
• Implementing loops such as while, for and foreach
• Building complete scripts that incorporate loops and conditional expressions

Exploiting the built-in functionality of PHP

• Manipulating string data
• Reading and writing data using file I/O functions
• Surveying categories of PHP functions

Building Complete Database-Driven Web Applications

Crafting database connections

• Examining Data Source Names (DSN) attributes
• Constructing proper DSNs
• Determining differences between DSNs

Applying the fundamentals of object-oriented PHP Data Object (PDO) technology

• Creating and manipulating PDO objects
• Executing SQL queries through PDO objects
• Retrieving query results as associative arrays with PDO object methods
• Looping through database result sets
• Integrating returned data into Web applications
• Closing the PDO database connection

Interacting with the Client

Incorporating user input

• Determining how data is sent from forms to PHP scripts
• Retrieving form data with $_POST and $_GET arrays
• Validating retrieved data
• Strategies for handling invalid input

Responding to user input

• Storing state information using cookies
• Creating dynamically generated hyperlinks to call PHP scripts
• Presenting the user with input options via different HTML form elements

Applying conditional redirection

• Examining state information from cookies
• Determining application context based upon state information
• Applying conditional logic to redirect to the correct contextual page

Extending Functionality with PHP

Debugging and deploying

• Discovering common PHP coding problems
• Exploring methods of debugging PHP
• Suppressing on-screen error messages on production servers
• Considering deployment configuration and security
• Configuring the php.ini file to control error messages

PHP object-orientation

• Differences between PHP and other object-oriented language constructs
• PHP object-oriented glossary

Integrating Ajax into PHP applications

• Outlining Ajax with a brief description
• Demonstrating the integration of Ajax with a PHP application