Easy PHP Programming

For those who need to design and create their own web pages, whether for personal use or for business purposes, there are few terms you should become familiar with. A few of those terms are “PHP,” “content management system,” and “Joomla.” The following article is a brief description of these three terms and tools and how you can use them to create, manage, and enhance dynamic web pages.

PHP

PHP originally stood for “personal home page,” as that was what it was designed to help create; however, today, PHP is used to create a variety of different types of web pages. Essentially, PHP is a scripting language that people need to know in order to design and produce dynamic web pages. PHP is free software, and because it is compatible with most web servers and almost every operating system and platform, it is widely used for general web page purposes and can even be embedded into HTML. In using PHP, a web server takes a PHP code as input and creates web page content as output.

Content Management System

A system that utilizes PHP codes is a content management system or CMS. CMS software uses the PHP scripting language to create and manage HTML content as well as other documents and images. And this software not only helps you create web content, but also allows you to control and edit that content.

Essentially, a CMS makes creating and managing web pages simpler and more understandable. In fact, most content management systems are designed so that users that have little or no knowledge of programming languages can create and manage their own web pages. These systems store content in databases and offer a variety of web page templates for the user to choose from.

Joomla

Joomla is a content management system that users around the world use to publish content on the web and internet. Like many other content managing systems, it is written in the PHP programming language and uses a database to store information. Some of the features that the system includes are page caching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, website searching, and language internationalization. Joomla extensions and templates are typically distributed as a zip file or other compressed format that must be installed before implementing. With this set of basic functions and the countless other free Joomla extensions available, creating a dynamic web page to improve businesses (or to enhance personal pages) is easy to manage in-house.

As a content management system, Joomla offers a variety of great benefits for those looking to create their own web pages. First of all, and perhaps most importantly, Joomla is free. And as new versions and updates of Joomla are released, new features and improvements also become available. Joomla is fast growing and offers limitless possibilities for future applications.

Another major benefit of Joomla is how easy it is to add or modify content. With Joomla, you can add images and other multimedia elements, and you can also organize and manage important data with relative ease.

And as Joomla has gained increasing popularity, it has won many awards for its features and services. Joomla’s popularity offers another often-ignored benefit to users. Because so many users are familiar with Joomla, there is a plethora of forums, web pages, and directories centered on how to use Joomla and to help those who have questions or experiencing problems with the software. And the software is also well supported by developers and service providers. Hence, if you have a question about Joomla, chances are that with very little effort, you can find the answer.

One of the other advantages of Joomla is that it offers a variety of free Joomla extensions. Some extensions are called “plugins” which are background extensions that extend Joomla with new functionality. “Components” are also Joomla extensions that allow users to expand the number of features on their web page, backup their websites, translate content, and create URLs. “Modules” also expand a web pages’ functionality by adding features such as a calendar display or Google AdSense.

In fact, these extensions offer perhaps the biggest benefits of using Joomla. Some of these extensions include dynamic form builders, image and multimedia galleries, e-commerce and shopping cart engines, forums and chat software, calendars, blogging software, email newsletters, data collection and reporting tools, banner advertising systems, subscription services, and more. And there are a host of other free Joomla extensions that can enhance any webpage.

Specifically, there are five Joomla extensions that are arguably the most popular. “Community Builder” allows users to extend profiles, enhance registration workflows, user lists, and much more. “FireBoard Forum” is a forum that is both stylish and powerful and will allow visitors of the web page to engage in discussion and commentary. “Expose Flash Gallery” is an extension that creates slide shows from your own uploaded images. And Joomla’s “Events Calendar” is a classic that informs viewers of important dates and events.

And even though Joomla is simple to use, these many extensions allow a person to create the most complex of corporate websites. In fact, Joomla is used for a variety of applications including corporate websites, small business websites, non-profit and organizational websites, government applications, school and church websites, personal or family homepages, community-based portals, magazines and newspapers, and online commerce. Essentially, if you need to create a webpage for any purpose, Joomla has the reliability and outstanding features to help you create the webpage you need.

Once you understand the basic concepts of PHP and content managing systems, you are ready to start creating your own web page. And with a reliable, free CMS such as Joomla, you will soon be on your way to creating and managing a web page that directly meets all of your needs.

PHP is an open sourced server side scripting language and almost used in foremost operating systems like Linux, UNIX and also in Windows. PHP follows object oriented programming (OOPs), practical programming rules and nearly a combination of them. It uses command line interface, desktop applications thus it is know as the best traditional server side scripting language.

PHP programming supports most of the reputed database connections like Oracle, SQL, My SQL, and ODBC thus it is an easy choice for freelance programmers to build their dynamic pages with the help of PHP development. The latest version is also popular because it can be embedded HTML coding directly and can be carried by nearly all of the web servers.

PHP is a popular language because of its numerous features infused specifically to design websites or you can say to develop dynamic pages. PHP engine and the PHP coding can be used in every platform that increases flexibility of PHP language. Basically PHP is profitable for both programmers and designers, programmers who realizing its flexibility and tempo and web designers who worth its handiness and user-friendliness.

PHP language can develop giant business services like CRM solutions, community sites, chatting forums and E-Commerce shopping cart as well. Several pools of qualified web programmers are using PHP development for organizing their goal, resource planning and fulfilling their client requirements.

Here are a few things which you can perform with PHP:

Design HTML web forms. Superb Database usability to store records. Calculate visitors by sessions and cookies. You can use arrays as well. Play with files through file management system. Creating XML for large number of product list on E-Commerce
Serialization

Serialization is not needed for all kind of databases. In some particular databases like ODBC, MS SQL etc when you wish to pass a value without mentioning its type, it gets dumb. This problem is solved properly in the latest version of PHP. This is also an added advantage of PHP over all king of scripting languages.

Using PHP to improve design on your website

PHP has many capabilities features designed specifically for use in Web sites, including the following:

1. Securing Your Website: PHP is designed to allow user level access to the file system, it’s entirely possible to write a PHP script that will allow you to read system files such as password, modify your Ethernet connections, etc. thus this can provide a customer with an exclusive membership in the business.

2. Working with Web Forms: HTML form can be displayed by PHP and it is the best way to know more about the requirements of your customers and to gather note about their detailed benefits.

3. Communicate with Your Databases: When a persistent connection is requested, PHP checks if there is already an identical persistent connection and if it exists, it uses it. If it does not exist, it creates the link.

4. Customer Loyalty Functions: PHP allows content and applications to be generated and run server-side. This is highly advantageous to web users as they do not have to rely on their own system resources to generate or run content on their own systems. This allows for faster delivery of applications to the user and reduces errors and problems due to browser incompatibilities.

The next array comparison functions is the array_diff_assoc(array1,array2,array3,array3…..), usage is similar with all of these array_diff functions varying only in the way the comparisons are done. Below is sample code for array_diff_assoc:

$a1=array(0=>“Mouse”,1=>”Cat”,2=>”Dog”);
$a2=array(0=>”Lizard”,1=>”Dog”,2=>”Cat”);
$a3=array(0=>”Dog”,1=>”Cat”,2=>”Mouse”);
print_r(array_diff_assoc($a1,$a2,$a3))
?>

Giving you : Array ([0] => Mouse [2] => Dog).

Next we have the array_diff_key() function compares two or more arrays and returns an array with the keys and values from the first array only if the key is not present in the other arrays. Syntax is array_diff_key(array1,array2,array3……)which is similar to the other array_diff functions.

Sample usage:
$a1=array(0=>“Mouse”,1=>”Cat”,2=>”Dog”);
$a2=array(2=>”Fish”,3=>”Rat”,4=>”Bee”);
$a3=array(5=>”Dog”,6=>”Cat”,7=>”Fish”)
print_r(array_diff_key($a1,$a2,$a3));
?>

Giving you : Array([0] => Mouse [0] => Cat)

Refactoring, in software engineering mostly means modifying a source code without changing its external behavior. It is also referred to us “cleaning up.” With a refactoring functionality, one can sculpt the code to improve legibility or change its internal structure and design. It is also useful in maintainability for it removes dead codes. But refactoring is not that accepted because its long term effects has not been fully studied yet. It has difficulties as well regarding interface. PHP developers should implement refactoring’s facility and capabilities. Because of refactoring together with other tools, it has resulted in PHP trying to catch up with other languages that emphasize on scalability regarding Web application.

PHP’s use is not limited to the programming language for open source or custom written application. Don’t you know that PHP is also constructive for commercial application distribution? But there’s a little disadvantage to PHP’s interpreted language because it implies that the source code you wrote is open for others’ view. But there is of course a technique called Obfuscation to not allow others see the code you have written. Iono and PHP Encoder (by IonCube) is an application used to obfuscate and license the code you wrote. Iono serves as a front end to your licensing and PHP Encoder secures the codes. In this way, you can still keep the codes for yourself.

The first function, array_diff() is used for comparing several tables or arrays which gives an array with the keys and values from the first array if the value is not available in the other arrays. Syntax is as follows : array_diff(array1,array2,array3……), where array 1 is the table to which all the other arrays will be compared to. The 2nd array(array 2) is an array that is compared with the first array and so on and so forth. Below is sample code of its use and the outcome of the functions comparison :

$a1=array(0=>“Mouse”,1=>”Cat”,2=>”Dog”);
$a2=array(3=>”Dog”,4=>”Cat”,5=>”Lizard”);
print_r(array_diff($a1,$a2));
?>

Giving you the result : Array( [0] =>Mouse )

The array_count_values() function returns an array which contains the keys of the original array’s value and the value is the number of occurences. A sample of it’s use is shown below:

$a=array("Mouse","Cat","Dog","Cat");
print_r(array_count_values($a));
?>

Which would give us an output of : Array ( [Mouse]=> 1 [Cat]=> 2 [Dog]=> 1 )

The next functions are used to compare the contents of one array against one or more arrays either returning the key, keys and contents or solely the contents of the specified fields that result from their comparisons. They are array_diff(), array_diff_assoc(), array_diff_key(), array_diff_uassoc() and array_diff_ukey(). all of these are used to determine the difference between a set of arrays returning either the keys or contents to give the results of the said array comparison/s.

The array_chunk() function on the on the other hand as the name implies, divides an array into chunks or several tables from the source table. The syntax goes something like array_chunk(array,size,preserve_key), wherein the array is the table that would be divided, the size is the number of elements which the new arrays are to contain and the preserve key which can either be true or false is used to either retain or revise the key or pointer value of the original table. An example is shown below:

$a=array(�a�=>�Cat�, �b�=>�Dog�, �c�=>�Horse�,�d�=>�Cow�);
print_r(array_chunk($a,2);
?>

The code would have an output of:

Array (
[0] => Array ( [0] = > Cat [1] => Dog )
[1] => Array ( [0] => Horse [1] => Cow )
)

As we can see, the original array has been divided into two arrays array0 and array1 and a value that is not given for the key had it assigned a new key for each of the tables. Another example would be :

$a=array(�a�=>�Cat�, �b�=>�Dog�, �c�=>�Horse�,�d�=>�Cow�);
print_r(array_chunk($a,2,true);
?>

This would then give us ;
Array (
[0] => Array ( [a] = > Cat [b] => Dog )
[1] => Array ( [c] => Horse [d] => Cow )
)

This shows the significance of the retain key field wherein the two new arrays retained their original keys. The reverse of which would be the array_combine() which divided the array into one which holds the keys and one with the values.

As with all programming languages PHP has different variable types such as numeric, character, string and Boolean types. Boolean variables in PHP always return either true or false, integers are whole numbers, floating points are decimal or scientifically notated and strings are a chain of characters. Sounds familiar, well they are and they are mostly standard across the various programming languages. For a more in-depth discussion on the different data types of PHP go visit the manual page.
We next discuss operators such as the assignment operator which allows you to assign values to variables allowing complex operations to be constructed into more and more functional programs.

More than a quarter of all software vulnerabilities identified among the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) listed and recorded in the National Vulnerability Database is related to PHP. This makes PHP susceptible to hackers who develop scantily built applications written in PHP. Most of these vulnerabilities can be slightly exploited without being logged on the computer hosting the exposed application. Because of bad programming habits such as failing to check data before entering into a database, and certain features, such exploitation is possible.. This kind of attacks is not limited to PHP and can mostly be avoided by following the appropriate coding procedures and principles.