Sunday, July 3, 2016

Pre requisites to learning PHP and MySQL

08:39  , , , , , , ,  

Pre-requisites

Before you continue you should have a basic understanding of the following:

  • HTML/XHTML
  • JavaScript

What is PHP?

  • PHP stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor
  • PHP is a server-side scripting language, like ASP
  • PHP scripts are executed on the server
  • PHP supports many databases (MySQL, Informix, Oracle, Sybase, Solid, PostgreSQL, Generic ODBC, etc.)
  • PHP is an open source software
  • PHP is free to download and use

What is a PHP File?

  • PHP files can contain text, HTML tags and scripts
  • PHP files are returned to the browser as plain HTML
  • PHP files have a file extension of ".php", ".php3", or ".phtml"

What is MySQL?

  • MySQL is a database server
  • MySQL is ideal for both small and large applications
  • MySQL supports standard SQL
  • MySQL compiles on a number of platforms
  • MySQL is free to download and use

PHP + MySQL

  • PHP combined with MySQL are cross-platform (you can develop in Windows and serve on a Unix platform)

Why PHP?

  • PHP runs on different platforms (Windows, Linux, Unix, etc.)
  • PHP is compatible with almost all servers used today (Apache, IIS, etc.)
  • PHP is FREE to download from the official PHP resource: www.php.net
  • PHP is easy to learn and runs efficiently on the server side

Where to Start?

To get access to a web server with PHP support, you can:

  • Install Apache (or IIS) on your own server, install PHP, and MySQL
  • Or find a web hosting plan with PHP and MySQL support

PHP Installation

What do you need?

Most people would prefer to install a all-in-one solution:

WampServer 2.0i [07/11/09] ? for Windows platform Includes : - Apache 2.2.11 -

MySQL 5.1.36 - PHP 5.3.0

http://www.wampserver.com/en/

http://lamphowto.com/ for Linux platform

Already have a web server?

If your server supports PHP you dont need to do anything.

Just create some .php files in your web directory, and the server will parse them for you. Because it is free, most web hosts offer PHP support. However, if your server does not support PHP, you must install PHP. Here is a link to a good tutorial from PHP.net on how to install PHP5:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/install.php

Download PHP

Download PHP for free here: http://www.php.net/downloads.php

Download MySQL Database

Download MySQL for free here: http://www.mysql.com/downloads/index.html

Download Apache Server

Download Apache for free here: http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi

Download a nice text editor

http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html