Book Image

The PHP Workshop

By : Jordi Martinez, Alexandru Busuioc, David Carr, Markus Gray, Vijay Joshi, Mark McCollum, Bart McLeod, M A Hossain Tonu
Book Image

The PHP Workshop

By: Jordi Martinez, Alexandru Busuioc, David Carr, Markus Gray, Vijay Joshi, Mark McCollum, Bart McLeod, M A Hossain Tonu

Overview of this book

Do you want to build your own websites, but have never really been confident enough to turn your ideas into real projects? If your web development skills are a bit rusty, or if you've simply never programmed before, The PHP Workshop will show you how to build dynamic websites using PHP with the help of engaging examples and challenging activities. This PHP tutorial starts with an introduction to PHP, getting you set up with a productive development environment. You will write, execute, and troubleshoot your first PHP script using a built-in templating engine and server. Next, you'll learn about variables and data types, and see how conditions and loops help control the flow of a PHP program. Progressing through the chapters, you'll use HTTP methods to turn your PHP scripts into web apps, persist data by connecting to an external database, handle application errors, and improve functionality by using third-party packages. By the end of this Workshop, you'll be well-versed in web application development, and have the knowledge and skills to creatively tackle your own ambitious projects with PHP.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

Scalar Types

Scalar type declaration is either coercive (no need to be specified explicitly) or strict (type hinted strictly). By default, types are coercive.

Coercive means that PHP will coerce a number to an integer even if it's a string.

Take the following example. Here, we have a function called number that's been type hinted to only accept integers.

In this example, a string is being passed. When running PHP in coercive mode (this is on by default), this will work and print 1 to the screen:

<?php
function number(int $int)
{
    echo "the number is: $int";
}
number('1');

To facilitate strict mode, a single declare directive is placed at the top of the file containing the following:

declare(strict_types=1);

Now, run the example again in strict mode:

<?php
declare(strict_types=1);
function number(int $int)
{
    echo "the number is: $int";
}
number('1');

This...