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)

PHP Superglobals

The PHP engine uses a list of built-in variables that are accessible anywhere in a PHP script, called superglobals. These superglobals contain data that is mostly related to requests, but they also contain some server information and running PHP script file information as well.

The most frequently used superglobals are the $_SERVER, $_SESSION, $_GET, $_POST, $_COOKIE, and $_FILES variables.

A good practice is to not mess with superglobals across a project, meaning it would be better not to alter the existing data or to add more or remove data from these variables. Ideally, you would only access them once per request. $_SESSION is an exception in this matter, as its data is provided by the application and not by the PHP engine.

You can always learn about superglobals in more depth by visiting the official PHP documentation page, at http://php.net/manual/en/language.variables.superglobals.php.

$_SERVER

The $_SERVER superglobal contains request headers...