Beginning Programming All-in-One For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 4

PHP

IN THIS CHAPTER

Understanding the structure of a PHP program

Creating comments and declaring variables

Using operators

Working with branching and looping statements

Using functions

Working with arrays

Using objects

In the old days, web pages were used to display information, such as text and graphics. Nowadays, web pages are dynamic, so they not only need to respond to the user but often need to retrieve information off a web page and store it in a database, such as when you type your credit card number to buy something off a website.

HTML can create simple user interfaces, but when you need to transfer data from a web page to another program, such as a database, you need to use a programming language. Although programmers have used C, Perl, and Java to link web pages ...