Learning PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript Free downloaded pdf book

Learning PHP, MySQL, and

JavaScript

The combination of PHP and MySQL is the most convenient approach to dynamic, database-driven web design, holding its own in the face of challenges from integrated frameworks—such as Ruby on Rails—that are harder to learn. Due to its open source roots (unlike the competing Microsoft .NET framework), it is free to implement and is therefore an extremely popular option for web development.

Any would-be developer on a Unix/Linux or even a Windows/Apache platform will need to master these technologies. At the same time, the JavaScript is important, as it provides the hidden communication with the web server to create seamless interfaces.

With PHP, it’s a simple matter to embed dynamic activity in web pages. When you give

pages the .php extension, they have instant access to the scripting language. From a

developer’s point of view, all you have to do is write code such as the following:

echo "Hello World. Today is ".date("l").". ";

?>

How are you?

The opening

following code up to the ?> command. Outside of this construct, everything is sent to

the client as direct HTML. So the text “How are you?” is simply output to the browser;

within the PHP tags, the built-in date function displays the current day of the week

according to the server’s system time.

The final output of the two parts looks like this:

Hello World. Today is Wednesday. How are you?

PHP is a flexible language, and some people prefer to place the PHP construct directly

next to PHP code, like this:

Hello World. Today is . How are you?

There are also other ways of formatting and outputting information, which I’ll explain

in the chapters on PHP. The point is that with PHP, web developers have a scripting

language that although not as fast as compiling your code in C or a similar language,

is incredibly speedy and that also integrates seamlessly with HTML code.