Apache: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition

PHP

Another approach to the problem of orchestrating HTML with CGI scripts, databases, and Apache is PHP. Someone who is completely new to programming of any sort might do best to start with PHP, which extends HTML — and one has to learn HTML anyway.

Instead of writing CGI scripts in a language like Perl or Java, which then run in interaction with Apache and generate HTML pages to be sent to the client, PHP’s strategy is to embed itself into the HTML. The author then writes HTML with embedded commands, which are interpreted by the PHP package as the page is served up. For instance, you could include the line:

Hello world!<BR>

in your HTML. Or, you could have the PHP statement:

<?php print "Hello world!<BR>";?>

which would produce exactly the same effect. The <? php ...?> construction embeds PHP commands within standard HTML. PHP has resources to interact with databases and do most things that other scripting languages do.

The syntax of PHP is based on that of C with bits of Perl. The main problem with learning a new programming language is unlearning irrelevant bits of the ones you already know. So if you have no programming experience to confuse you, PHP may be as good a place to start as any. Its promoters claim that over a million web sites use it, so you will not be the first.

Also, since it was designed for its web function from the start, it avoids a lot of the bodging that has proven necessary to get Perl to work properly in a web environment. On the other hand, it is relatively ...