PHP Lecture Notes

Introduction

PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor
Server Side language
Using scripts on your website allows you to add many new interactive features
like feedback forms, guestbooks, message boards, counter, etc. You can access
database and files. With these things on your website you will find that it gives a
more professional image.
Being web-oriented, PHP also contains all the functions youll need to do things
on the Internet. There are functions for connecting to remote webserver, sending
email and urlencoding strings to protect special characters.
The script is not visible to the user, only the output.
PHP must be installed on the webserver.

PHP is declared between <?php?> or <script language=php></script>
Comments are // or /*.*/

Discuss hello.php

Variables

PHP is not a strongly typed language. The same variable can hold strings or
numbers. They dont have to be declared, just use them or reuse them:

$welcome=Hello and welcome to my website.;
$numvisitor=27;
$welcome=83;

Numbers
All the rule about precedence apply

Strings
To assign a string to a variable, you must use quotes. Double quotes allow for
variable substitution and escape sequences, single quotes do not.
Ex.
$first_name=Mimi;
$greeting1 = Hello, my first name is $first_name;
echo $greeting1;
$last_name=Opkins;
$greeting2=Hello, my last name is $last_name.;
echo $greeting2;
Output:
Hello, my first name is Mimi.
Hello, my last name is $last_name.

Ex.
echo Mimi\nOpkins;
Output:
Mimi
Opkins
In the source code only, not a break on the page. To break lines on the page you
still need a <BR> tag.

To insert or or \ you need to use an escape character (\)
Ex.
Mimi \the teacher\ Opkins
Output:
Mimi the teacher Opkins

Or you can use but you wont be able to use variable substitution

If you want to concatenate two strings use the . operator.
Ex.
$full_name=$first_name . . $last_name
Output:
Mimi Opkins

Arrays
You can create arrays use integer subscripts or you can create associate arrays.
Ex.
$name[0] = Mimi;
$name[1]=Opkins;
echo $name[0] . . $name[1];
Output:
Mimi Opkins

Associative arrays use strings for substrings instead of integers.
Ex.
$personal_data[firstname]=Mimi;
$personal_data[nickname]=teacher;
$personal_data[lastname]=Opkins;
$personal_data[age]=29;
echo Hello . $personal_data[firstname] . ! We know
that you are . $personal_data[age] . years old.;
Output:
Hello Mimi! We know that you are 29 years old.
Control Statements

IF statement
Normal if..then..else statement
Ex.
if ($a<5) {
$b=$a+10;
}
else {
$b=$a*2;
}

Operator Meaning
== Is Equal to
!= Not Equal to
< Is less than
<= Is less than or equal to
> Is Greater than
>= Is Greater than or equal to
&& and And
|| or Or

As soon as the true or falsity of a Boolean expression can be determined, the
comparisons stop.

EX.
mysql_connect() or die(Could not connect to the
database!);
Output:
The function mysql_connect() tries to make a connection to
a MySQl database. If it returns true if it was able to make
a connection and PHP skips the next statement. The second
statement makes PHP stop with an error message, if the
first statement fails.

For loop
Normal for loop: for (starting value;ending value;increment)
Ex.
for ($i=0; $i<10; $i++){
echo $i;
}
While Loop
Normal while loop
while (something is true) {
some statements
}
Ex.
$i=0;
while ($i<10){
echo $i;
$i++;
}



Functions
User-Defined Functions
Allow for code reuse
Ex.
function checkten($arg) {
if ($arg<10) {
echo $arg is less than 10;
}
else {
echo $arg is greater than or equal to 10;
}
}

foo(15);

You can also return values from a function.
Ex.
function difften($arg) {
return $arg-10;
}

echo The difference of 14 and 10 is difften(14).
Pre-Defined Functions
PHP has a vast library of pre-defined functions. A reference manual can be found
at:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/funcref.php

Discuss today.php

Discuss email.php

Environment Variables

Discuss phpinfo.php

Discuss browsertest.php

Discuss cookie.php

Some of the more useful String functions are:
PHP String functions
explode Split a string by string
implode join array elements with a string
join join array elements with a string (same as implode)
ltrim strip whitespace from the beginning of a string
number_format format a number with grouped thousands
rtrim strip whitespace from the end of a string
sprintf return a formatted string
sscanf parses input from a string according to a format
strchr find the first occurrence of a character
strcmp string comparison
strlen get string length
strpos find the position of fist occurrence of a string
strstr find the first occurrence of a string
strtok tokenize string
strtolower make a string lowercase
strtoupper make a string uppercase
trim strip whitespace from the beginning and end of a string
Working With Forms
Form data can be retrieved through either:
$variable_name=$HTTP_GET_VARS[variable]
or
$variable_name=$HTTP_POST_VARS[variable]
or
just by $variable where variable is the string used in the
name attribute of the html tag

Discuss form.php/action.php

Discuss emailform.html/emailform.php

Discuss icecream.html/icecream.php
File I/ O

fopen() takes two arguments, file name and mode and returns a file pointer. A file
pointer provides information about the file and is used as a reference. The file
name is the full or relative path to the file you want to create or open and mode
can be any of the following:

File
Mode Description
r opens the existing file in order to read data from it. The file pointer is
placed at the beginning of the file, before any data

r+ opens the existing file for reading or writing. The file pointer is placed at
the beginning of the file, before any data

w opens a file only for writing. If a file with that name does not exist, attempts
to create a new file. If the file does exist, deletes all existing contents and
places the file pointer at the beginning of the file

w+ opens a file for reading and writing. If a file with that name does not exist,
attempts to create a new file. If the file does exist, deletes all existing
contents and places the file pointer at the beginning of the file

a opens a file only for writing. If a file with that name does not exist, attempts
to create a new file. If the file does exist, places the file pointer at the end
of the file, after all other data

a+ opens a file for reading and writing. If a file with that name does not exist,
attempts to create a new file. If the file does exist, places the file pointer at
the end of the file, after all other data

Ex.
$newfile=fopen(/usr/local/apache/htdocs/mydata.txt,a+);

fclose() closes a file
Ex:
fclose($newfile);

fwrite() or fputs() writes data to an open file: fwrite(file,data)
Ex.
fwrite($newfile,This is a new file.);

fread() reads data from an open file: fread(file,length)
To read the entire file use the filesize(filename) function
Ex.
fread($newfile,filesize(/usr/local/apache/htdocs/mydata.txt))

Discuss readwrite.php