What is PHP?

The server-side scripting language PHP is one of the most popular languages in the world. That’s because it’s open source and easy to learn. PHP runs server-side, has a huge community, and is an integral part of major web ap­plic­a­tions.

What does PHP stand for?

Ori­gin­ally ‘PHP’ was an ab­bre­vi­ation for ‘Personal Home Page Tools’ but is now used as a recursive acronym for ‘PHP: Hypertext Pre­pro­cessor’. While the term may be well known, it doesn’t entirely explain what PHP is. PHP is a scripting language that is mainly used in the context of dynamic websites and ap­plic­a­tions. The language was invented back in 1995 by Danish-Canadian developer Rasmus Lerdorf and first released in the same year. Its syntax is based on C and Perl and it is open source. PHP is widely used because it’s con­sidered easy to learn.

What makes PHP so special?

PHP’s biggest feature is probably that it is a scripting language that’s executed ex­clus­ively server-side. This dis­tin­guishes it from other popular web pro­gram­ming languages like CSS, HTML, or JavaS­cript.

PHP source code isn’t trans­mit­ted directly to a web browser. First, it passes through a so-called in­ter­pret­er at the server level. This in­ter­pret­er processes requests made by clients, converts them, and sends them back to the browser. While the output is often a HTML document, PHP can also generate images or PDF documents, among other things. The script always stays on the server and only the result is forwarded to the end device.

Many large content man­age­ment systems use PHP. Drupal, Joomla, TYPO3, and WordPress are just a few of the many systems based on PHP. This is one of the reasons why the language is widely used worldwide and by numerous web services. It’s con­sidered the most popular and suc­cess­ful server-side pro­gram­ming language! Even though the number of users has dropped a bit in recent years due to new com­pet­it­ors, almost 80 percent of all websites still partially rely on PHP.

What’s PHP used for?

If you know what PHP is, common uses of the language are probably obvious to you. Although there are many ways to use it, these three areas are most popular:

• Server-side pro­gram­ming: Probably the most important area of ap­plic­a­tion. To use the language, three com­pon­ents are required, which are a PHP parser, a web server, and a web browser. The server connects to a PHP installer so that the browser can access content stored on the server. This also makes it possible to test websites for func­tion­al­ity and sus­cept­ib­il­ity to errors before they’re published.
• Command-line pro­gram­ming: If you only use a PHP parser, you can write and use PHP scripts without a server or browser. PHP parsers are suited for smaller programs for word pro­cessing or on-website tasks. These kinds of scripts work together with cron or the Task Scheduler.
• Desktop ap­plic­a­tions: In principle, you can also use PHP to create desktop ap­plic­a­tions with a graphical user interface. But since the steps can be quite complex, this approach is better suited if you already have a deep un­der­stand­ing of the language.

What are the benefits of PHP?

PHP’s pop­ular­ity doesn’t come down to luck. The scripting language offers users numerous ad­vant­ages. These are its key benefits:

• Ver­sat­il­ity: In our ex­plan­a­tion of what PHP is, we’ve already hinted at this. But the ver­sat­il­ity of the scripting language goes beyond its areas of ap­plic­a­tion. PHP can be easily in­teg­rated with the most common operating systems and most web servers.
• Learning curve: Compared to many other scripting languages, PHP is very easy to learn. After a short time, you’ll be able to use the language in many areas. And due to its enormous scope, the language is also a great choice even if you’re already a pro.
• Output: Although PHP is mainly used for the output of HTML content, numerous other formats are also possible. The language can also dy­nam­ic­ally generate images, an­im­a­tions, or PDF documents, among other things, while also sup­port­ing XML files.
• Databases and protocols: Most databases are also supported by PHP, making the language great for building database-driven ap­plic­a­tions. In addition, com­mu­nic­a­tion with services that use protocols like HTTP, IMAP, or LDAP is just as possible as in­ter­ac­tion with Java objects.
• Open source: PHP is open source and can be freely used and modified. This gives you many pos­sib­il­it­ies, but also makes it wallet friendly.
• Community: The scripting language’s great pop­ular­ity means there’s a great deal of doc­u­ment­a­tion on PHP. Its huge community not only provides newcomers with advice and support, but also con­tinu­ously develops the language.

What are the dis­ad­vant­ages of PHP?

The positive things about PHP can also become dis­ad­vant­ages under certain cir­cum­stances. While you can learn the language quickly, some users over­es­tim­ate them­selves and neglect security standards. This can make web pages an easy target for attacks. That’s why it’s important to carefully test the website and check the scripts again and again to make sure they’re up to date.

If the code isn’t written cleanly, this can also have det­ri­ment­al effects on the per­form­ance of the page. Es­pe­cially with high numbers of visitors, PHP scripts can become vul­ner­able. But with a little attention to detail, you can avoid these kinds of problems al­to­geth­er.

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