This document discusses PHP, a popular server-side scripting language used for web development. It provides an overview of PHP and compares it to other web development technologies. The key advantages of PHP include being open source, easy to learn and use, having a large community and support, and being suitable for rapid prototyping. While not as robust as other languages, PHP is well suited for building scalable, dynamic web applications and content management systems. Major websites like Facebook, Google, Wikipedia and WordPress are built using PHP.

1. Tech Talk: PHP
Lee Jen Wei

2. Overview
 Web Development Trends
 What is PHP ?
 MVC Frameworks
 Mobile Web Apps
 Command Line PHP
 Sites Using PHP
 Pros
 Cons
 References

3. Web Development Trends
 PHP
 Ruby (on Rails)
 Python (Django)
 ASP.NET
 JavaScript (Ajax, Node.js, AngularJS, Backbone.js,
Ember.js etc)
 Java
 Perl
 Scala (Play Framework)
 Erlang
 Clojure
 Groovy/Grails etc

4. What is PHP?
 PHP is mainly focused on server-side scripting, so
you can do anything any other CGI program can do,
such as collect form data, generate dynamic page
content, or send and receive cookies.
 The best things in using PHP are that it is extremely
simple for a newcomer, but offers many advanced
features for a professional programmer.

5. PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor
 Development started in 1994, by Rasmus Lerdorf.
 Server-side scripting language
 Interpreted language
 Multi-platform (Linux, *nix, Windows)
 Syntax resembles C and Perl
 Simpler and faster to develop in (than C and Perl
or Java)
 Fast, flexible and pragmatic

6. What is PHP?
Example:

7. Where does PHP fit ?
Web Browser
Internet or
Intranet
page
Web
HTTP
Request
Page
Web
page
Web
Server
server
Added
function
ality
Added
function
ality
Client-side
“Active pages”
JavaScript, VBScript,
Applet, ActiveX
Server-side
“Dynamic pages”
CGI, SSI, Server
API, ASP, JSP, PHP,
COM/DCOM,
CORBAActive and dynamic page technology
can be used together – server-side
program generates customized active
pages.

8. Putting it all together
Web-Client
Web-Server
DBMS
Database
Output
SQL
commands
PHP
HTML-Form
(+JavaScript)
Reply
WWW
Submit
Data
Call PHP
interpreter
Response Response
LAN
Web-Browser
Database
Server

9. PHP – MVC Frameworks
Model-View-Controller (MVC)
Yii
CakePHP
CodeIgniter
Symfony
Zend Framework
Kohana
many others

10. PHP – Mobile Web Apps
 Common to use server-side PHP to develop Mobile
Web Apps or Hybrid Apps
 Reuse php web site backend components and logic
 Enjoy the advantages of PHP
 Eg.
PHP Yii Framework
+
jQuery Mobile
(or any mobile web app framework)

11. Command Line PHP
 What is this good for:
 Parsing files to put into a database
 Ideal for scripts regularly executed using cron (on
*nix or Linux) or Task Scheduler (on Windows).
 Anything you use a shell script or perl script to do
 Variables of use:
 $argc, $argv[]
 $stdin, $stdout, $stderr

12. Sites using PHP

13. Sites using PHP
 Yahoo, Facebook, Google, YouTube, eBay, Flickr,
Zynga, Wikipedia, Craiglist, Digg
 Cisco, Oracle, Intel, Nokia, China Mobile,
 Wordpress sites (CMS), Drupal sites (CMS)
 etc

14. PHP - Pros
 Open source, completely free
 Specifically designed for Web Development /
Developers
 Excellent documentation
 Simplicity, Easy to learn, including frameworks
 Largest community support
 Multi-platforms
 Easy deployment (just copy the files)
 Easy to scale up and out
 Readily available pool of talents/coders

15. PHP - Pros
 Rapid prototyping, fast development time
 Lightweight, low overheads
 Fast execution time
 Silo process, loosely coupled
 Highly configurable
 Procedural / Object Oriented programming
 Extensive libraries / modules
 Support wide range of interfaces (DB, Outputs,
Protocols, Caching etc)

16. PHP - Cons
 Best used with caching stack
 Not thread-safe
 Less efficient multithreading support
 No strong standards of coding style
 Flexible, many ways to accomplished same task
 Not strongly typed, implicit conversion
 Not particularly sexy
 No built-in scheduler
 Not good for GUI or desktop apps

17. References
 www.php.net
 pecl.php.net
 pear.php.net
 www.yiiframework.com
 cakephp.org
 www.codeigniter.com