PHP Basics and Modern Features

PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is a server-side scripting language specially tailored for web development.

1. Features of PHP

• Web-focused: Highly efficient for creating dynamic pages by embedding code directly into HTML documents.
• Rich Frameworks: Boasts a powerful ecosystem with frameworks like Laravel and Symfony.
• Performance Enhancements: Since PHP 8.x, performance has significantly improved with the introduction of the JIT (Just-In-Time) compiler.

2. Basic Syntax

<?php
$name = "PHP"; // Declaring a variable (using the '$' symbol)
define("VERSION", "8.2"); // Defining a constant

echo "Hello, $name " . VERSION; // Strings are concatenated using a dot (.)
?>

3. Arrays and Superglobals

• Associative Arrays: Store data as key-value pairs.
• $_GET / $_POST: Built-in global variables used to retrieve form data sent by users.

$user = ["name" => "Alice", "age" => 25];
echo $user["name"];

4. Modern Project Management (Composer)

PHP developers use Composer, a dependency manager, to handle external libraries and their versions.

In the next section, we will explore Laravel, the most popular framework in the PHP ecosystem.