Chapter 1
Learning PHP Coding Basics
IN THIS CHAPTER
Getting comfy with PHP
Building PHP expressions
Controlling PHP code
Figuring out functions and objects
Debugging PHP
In the end, what I think set PHP apart in the early days, and still does today, is that it always tries to find the shortest path to solving the Web problem … When you need something up and working by Friday so you don’t have to spend all weekend leafing through 800-page manuals, PHP starts to look pretty good.
— RASMUS LERDORF, CREATOR OF PHP
You code the front end of a web project using tools such as HTML and CSS (see Book 2), JavaScript (see Book 3), and jQuery (see Book 4). You can build really awesome web pages using just those front-end tools, but if you want to build pages that are dynamic and applike, then you need to bring in the back end and use it to harness the power of the web server. For web projects, the back end most often means storing data in a MySQL database and accessing that data using the ...
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