As you might have seen, all of the PHP statement ends with �;� which would be somewhat similar to Perl. The valid HTML code that was handed back to the server was :



Who are You?

My name is MacGyver.

More in the coming posts when we dig deeper as we widen our understanding of PHP.

The first post had you making a program that was equivalent to the “Hello World” program used for teaching basics of a programming language and here’s how it worked. When the script was requested by opening the web page, Apache intercepted the request and passed it onto PHP which parsed the script looking for the code in between the terminators and then doing the requested operation which was to display the text contained within the echo command. This result was given back to the server then again to the client. The output contained a valid HTML so the browser was able to understand it and execute the requested operation.

This function combines two arrays where the first array is treated as the key and the second array as the contents of the said table. The syntax goes like this : array_combine(array1,array2), wherein the array1 is the table which contains the keys values, and the array2 is the contents. It should be noted that these two tables or array�s should have equal amounts of contents for it would become problematic if there was an error in the combination process. An example of the process is shown below:

$a1=array('a','b','c','d')
$a2=array2("Mouse","Rat","Rodent","Mice")
print_r(array_combine($a1,$a2))
?>

The output of which would give us a single table :

Array ( [a] => Mouse [b] => Rat [c] => Rodent [d] => Mice )

The function combined the two tables giving a single table that combines the keys and the contents. More in-depth discussion on the different array functions which in future posts would be the backbone of applications we will be building.

Dreamweaver does allow you advanced programming with PHP. However, do remember that you have to start from the bottom. Learning the basics first and slowly integrating them as you go along the way will be the best way to approach it. In short, don’t let your enthusiasm for the software get the best of you. Take it one step at a time.

So as far as PHP programming to being too technical, think again. You won’t know what you can do until you are upfront with the application itself. Once you do get upfront with it, don’t be surprised if you suddenly find yourself wanting to learn more about this line of programming. It will surely be an interesting journey into programming and development on your end.

PHP is considered to be one of the most popular server-side scripting systems on the web. And because of PHP’s popularity, a new generation of programmers who are familiar with PHP alone makes it possible to open a “command line interface” for PHP. Along with GUI functions support (Gtk or ncurses support), CLI or “command line interface” is a process of interacting with a computer by providing lines of text commands in written structure either from a keyboard input or from a script. This whole process of command line interface is considered to be a major step for PHP as it stands for its implementation as a genuine programming language.

PHP’s principal focus is server-side scripting which is a web server technology in that involves the process of running a script directly on the web server to create dynamic HTML pages thus fulfilling the user’s request. PHP is originally intended to generate dynamic web pages and its server-side scripting function is the same with other server-side scripting languages that offer dynamic content from a web server to a client, such as ASP.NET system of Microsoft, Sun Microsystems’s JavaServer Pages and mod perl. PHP attracted development of various frameworks (code library made for helping in software development) as well that give building blocks and a design structure to promote rapid application development (RAD).

There are five different categories of an error message that the PHP interpreter may fall into:
PARSE ERROR: usually problems with the syntax of the program. This includes forgetting to place a semi-colon by the end of a statement. The interpreter will stop running when it encounters a parse error.
FATAL ERROR: this means a severe problem with the program content. Like in a parse error, the interpreter will also stop running when encountering a fatal error.
WARNING: an advisory that the interpreter gives whenever there is something fishy in your program. But unlike the first two errors, the interpreter will still keep on running.
NOTICE: this is a tip from the PHP interpreter.

Variables are used to temporarily keep or store something that you want to save. When the time comes that you will be needing them, recall the variables and they will give you the information that you stored for you to change, delete or edit it.

$message = "Hello Haroon";
echo "PHP Tutorial";
echo $message;
?>

‘Hello Haroon’ is the information that you want to save temporarily, while the message ‘PHP Tutorial’ is displayed.

The output of the program will be: PHP TutorialHello Haroon

In PHP, $ is used to define a variable. PHP, unlike C or Java, is a loose-typing scripting language.