PHP uses

B

blackoutspy

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I'm thinking of picking up PHP in my spare time. I'm not new to programming, i have a background in java and C. Basically I'm just curious on what kind of things PHP does best. And I would like to know if it is mainly just a Web language or if you can make stand alone and local scripts.
 
from what i know about it i think it is a web based thing. The only things i use it for are webpages. it may be more useful than just that, but i am in no way an expert on php.
 
PHP has a wide range of uses. The most prominant uses (my opinion) are database related, in almost any area you can imagine where info needs to be stored and recalled....yes, you can make local & stand alone scripts.
To get some ideas of it's functionality, try
http://hotscripts.com/
and click on the PHP tab, each script has a brief explanation of what it does.
 
PHP can be used as both a CLI interpreter and as server-side scripting language (like Perl but IMHO a million times better) as a built-in Apache module. You can't make standalone apps like you can with Java though.

PHP is useful for all sorts of things, like steveedge said it's extremely powerful dealing with databases and forms and the like. If you're curious take a look at phpMyAdmin for an example of the range of things you can do with PHP.

I use PHP to drive most of my sites, instead of using IFRAMEs to include menus and content I use a PHP include(); function and URL arguments.

Since PHP parses the page before it's sent to the client you can use it to set HTTP headers too which are useful for trapping things like http-auth requests, even if there's no .htaccess file.

Take a look at www.php.net for more info.
 
You'll find that PHP has a library of functions that has no end. Integration of other products (mySQL, etc.) is direct and makes PHP a very convenient language. I use it for sites but also for small tools where the browser then just becomes an interface.
 
PHP is a solid and useful language that is currently dating a girl named MySQL/SQL/PostgreSQL (she's in hiding). As mentioned above, it's great using that include(); function and also creating scripts that can do fun things because of such ease of controlling it's variables.
 
For my research, I have to make a bunch of SQL queries, changing one or two parameters each time. I've found its easiest to set up a PHP script to have it read in the parameters from a file, and output it all to a file. Much easier than anything else I've tried.

If you do any web or SQL stuff, PHP would be useful to learn.

MP
 
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