Chapter 1, Getting Started with PHP, covers the fundamentals of using the PHP programming language. In this chapter, you'll learn basic PHP syntax and program structure. You'll also learn how to use variables, data types, operators, and conditionals.

Chapter 2, Arrays and Loops, shows you how to use the flow control structures. We will specifically cover loops and arrays in this chapter.

Chapter 3, Functions and Classes, teaches you to identify how to define and call functions. We will also cover how to create classes, and how to use the classes and functions together.

Chapter 4, Data Operations, teaches you how to handle input from users and printing outcomes back to them, handling errors gracefully, and learning the basics of using the MySQL database.

Chapter 5, Building a PHP Web Application, teaches you to apply OOP concepts in a framework. We will cover error reporting using the Whoops library and will learn how to handle those errors. We will also cover how to manage and structure our application in a framework.

Chapter 6, Building a PHP Framework, teaches you to build an MVC framework from scratch. Starting from an empty directory, we will build an entire working framework as a starting point for more complex applications.

Chapter 7, Authentication and User Management, teaches you the security aspect of the project, that is, authentication. We will be building login forms which interact with the database to verify the identity of the users. We will also cover how to set up a password recovery mechanism in our application.

Chapter 8, Building a Contacts Management System, teaches you to build a contacts CRUD (Create, Read, Update, and Delete) section, which will have a view page to view an individual contact. We will also be building the comments system for our contact application.

This book is for anyone interested in learning the fundamentals of PHP programming. For the best experience, you should have basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and MySQL.

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Create a new file and name it syntax.php."

Folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, include file names in text are shown as follows: "To remove an element from an array, use the unset function.

A block of code is set as follows:

<?php  
  echo "Hello World"; 
?> 

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

php syntax.php

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "So, when we click on the Submit button, the data will be submitted."

Important new programming terms are shown in bold. Conceptual terms are shown in italics.

Before you start this book, we'll install a PHP server, such as WAMP, and a text editor, such as Atom.

You can download the example code files from your account at http://www.packtpub.com for all the Packt Publishing books you have purchased. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files e-mailed directly to you.

The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/TrainingByPackt/Beginning-PHP/. In case there's an update to the code, it will be updated on the existing GitHub repository.