What is PHP?

Introduction: What is PHP

PHP (an acronym for Hypertext Pre-processor or the previous one Personal Home Pages) is a server-side open-source scripting language. It is great for dynamic content management, session tracking, and databases, and has fantastic community support.

PHP is a weak dynamic typing language, meaning it auto-determines a lot of implicit conversions, even though there may be a lack of precision or equivocal conversions. In 2020 PHP 8 came out. It has a JIT (just-in-time) Compilation, which sped up the work of the Preprocessor multiple times.

PHP is a popular programming language and is the foundation of such CMSs as WordPress (powers 43% of all the websites on the Internet), DRUPAL, Joomla, and the most popular E-Commerce Magento 2. Also, there are very popular PHP-based MVC Frameworks Symfony such as Yii2 (very popular in Russia) and Laravel (takes the 1st place in GitHub RANKING).

How PHP works

Let’s elaborate on how the Hypertext Preprocessor works. The browser sends an HTTP request to a web server. Then the index.php file is generated, which is handled by the preprocessor. Finally, the web server receives the output and sends it back over the Internet to a user’s web browser.

Why use PHP

PHP is incredibly easy for beginners and provides multiple advanced features for professional programmers. With it, you can learn and start writing basic scripts in a short period. Here is the list of the best features:

Versatility

PHP is a server-side programming language. Therefore, you need to set up a server to work with it. This language is also platform-independent. You don’t need a specific operating system to use it because it works on any platform, whether it’s macOS, Windows, Linux. For that reason, this is why it may be deployed on various systems and platforms easily and inexpensively.  

Secure and swift

PHP used to be scolded for its ability to attack the site with SQL injection, but with the release of MVC frameworks, this is now impossible. The major advantage is that due to the wide distribution and support of the community, there are now multiple tools, frameworks, and security and cyberattack protection solutions available. The second equally major feature is speed, try to use versions 8 and up, as these versions introduced the JIT Compilation, which speeds up PHP.

Well-linked with databases

PHP provides an easy way to establish a reliable connection to almost any database. So it can instantly connect to MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or any other database.

Testing

Among programming languages, PHP has a reputation for being stable and reliable. Its code has been tested under a wide variety of real-world and experimental conditions. If there’s a possible error or shortcoming, chances are someone in the community has found a way to deal with it. There are numerous frameworks and toolkits which are helpful for secure, efficiency and effectiveness of web development.

Community

PHP has a very responsive online community. The official documentation contains feature guides, chats and forums, so you can quickly solve your problem if you get stuck.

Low-cost open-source software

PHP is a no-cost language that can significantly help you save on your development expenses. A lot of the development tools normally used with this language are open-source and available for free, so they keep the cost of the project down even more. Numerous frameworks offer Hypertext functionalities and make the development process easier and much better, for example, the most popular and widely used is Laravel.

Conclusion

Rasmus Lerdorf is a Danish-Canadian programmer who released the first version of PHP in 1994. It continues to be a widely used and actual language in web development. It has been available for quite a long time. Major companies like Slack, Meta (Facebook), HPVM, and Wikipedia use the language extensively. Web Hosting Platforms like BlueHost, Cloudways(Laminas Hosting), Site ground run their hosting servers using Hypertext Preprocessor.

On the Flatlogic Platform, you can also use PHP when choosing the Laravel backend framework for creating your application. Afterward, you will get in a few minutes the Laravel CRUD admin panel with DataBase models and API.