PHP is an open-source general purpose scripting language, widely used for website development. It is developed by Rasmus Lerdorf. PHP stands for a recursive acronym PHP.
What is PHP
PHP is an open-source, interpreted, and object-oriented scripting language that can be executed at the server-side. PHP is well suited for web development. Therefore, it is used to develop web applications (an application that executes on the server and generates the dynamic page.
<?php $user = "John"; ?> <html> <head></head> <body> Hello <?php echo $user; ?>! </body> </html>
Features of PHP
- Open-Source and Free: PHP is firstly open source which means anyone can use PHP code without any licensing. Along with this one can run PHP on any operating system like Windows, macOS, Linux, Unix and more.
- PHP Server-Side Scripting: PHP code executes on the server before sending HTML content to the user’s browser, allowing for the dynamic generation of web pages and handling user interactions.
- Interpreted language: PHP code is interpreted line by line, eliminating the need for compilation and simplifying development and testing processes.
- Database connectivity: PHP integrates seamlessly with various databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Oracle, facilitating data storage and retrieval for web applications.
- Object-oriented programming (OOP): PHP supports OOP concepts like classes, objects, inheritance, and polymorphism, enabling better code organization and modularity.
For testing our code, we are able to print messages to our console using the echo command.