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)

Branching

As we discussed earlier, determining the correct path or choosing one block of code to execute among multiple blocks of code can be described as Branching. Branching can be performed based on whether a Boolean expression evaluates to true or false. Hence, following this concept, we get to choose our desired statement or groups of statements to execute based on an outcome of a Boolean expression.

The if and switch statements are the two main branching control structures. if is the most commonly used conditional structure within any programming language. switch can be used in certain situations where multiple branches can be chosen by a single value or expression, or where a series of if statements would be inconvenient.

The if Statement

The syntax of if is as follows:

if (expression)
    statement;

Here, if (expression) is the control structure, and statement is a single-line statement terminated with a semicolon or multiple statements enclosed...