Php

[Flubb10]

So I've noticed that there are a lot of pages that end in php. What exactly is php and how do I use it. What are the advantages of using this instead of another language? And where do I learn more about this?

[TonyB]

more and more people are coding in php instead of other codes. it's a lot cleaner code than others out there which helps rankings for the search engines.

[dansgalaxy]

PHP which means Php - Hypertext - Preprocessor

is a server side language and can actually THINK do calculations and a hell of alot more.

[TonyB]

really, i didn't know it went off calcualtions.

[dansgalaxy]

*roll eyes*

Lol,

Okay in html/CSS you cant do simple things like:

1+1=2 and have it work it out

but in php you can do something like:

$total = 1+1;

echo $total (will show 2)

and thats the simple stuff...

HTML/CSS/XHTML is ONLY a display/Markup lanagage which controls the look at layout, all the server does to a html file is simple send it to the browser.

if the server reconises it as PHP it will put it through the PHP parser which works it all out and if you like it creates the final set of html and THEN apache sends it to the browser...

:D

[Chainsawkitten]

Actually, it doesn't wait until all the code has been finished. It sends html every time you use echo.

Then why should we use PHP to echo the answer of 1+1 instead of just writing 2 in a html file? The answer is that that was just a simple example. PHP can do much more advanced stuff like getting things from databases etc. This forum is coded in PHP which allows the users to create and answer in different threads. How would you let the user create a thread in pure html?