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)

Summary

In this chapter, you learned how to handle files with PHP, which includes creating, writing, reading, and other filesystem-related operations. You also performed some basic, yet powerful, operations against a MySQL database server, creating a database structure and inserting, modifying, and deleting data. Although it might look a bit complex or overwhelming at the beginning, remember: it's like riding a bike – once practiced enough, until you get comfortable with it, you will never forget it (and it will actually get you from point A to point B way faster). In the next chapter, we will cover the concept of error handling, which is essential to identify potential problems in an application, and prevent important details leaking out to your users in the form of nasty error messages.