PHP stands for hypertext preprocessor, it’s a powerful tool for making dynamic and interactive web pages just like ASP.PHP is an open source, sever side scripting language which is more efficient and widely used. It even supports many databases like oracle, My SQL, Sybase, generic ODBC etc.
A PHP file generally contains text, HTML tags and scripts. These files are returned to the browser as plain HTML and the files have an extension like .php, .phtml, .php3.
PHP is a loosely coupled language; here we need not declare the variables before adding a value to it. It automatically converts the variable to correct data type, depending on its value whereas in a strongly couple language the type of variable and the variable has to be declared before using it. A PHP scripting block always starts with <?php and ends with >?.
Just like C and CPP languages PHP also has operators like arithmetic, assignment, logical. it even contains if, if-else statements, switch cases, comments, arrays, loops, function declarations.
PHP form handling is the most important aspect of PHP. Here the PHP and HTML form is that any form element in an HTML page will automatically be available for PHP scripts. User input should be validated on browser. Here the browser validation is fast and reduces server load.
Download Hypertext Pre Processor Lab Manual.