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)

Introduction

Since PHP is a dynamically typed language where types are associated with data instead of variables, it's essential to understand the role that types play in the data operations landscape. In the previous chapter, we learned about the available data types in PHP, their usage with variables and typecasting. We also practiced adding and removing items from an array and went through type conversion and alternative approaches to assigning string data to a variable with heredoc and nowdoc.

In this chapter, we will discuss control statements and why they are essential, and we'll explore what PHP has to offer in this area. Control statements are the most important feature of any programming language. In simple terms, they help to control the flow of a program. Branching and looping are the main types of control structures that help to decide program flow. They also help to craft recursive loops for complex program flows.

Branching allows us to follow the correct...