PHP & Web Development Blogs

In his talk, “Writing Viruses for Fun, Not Profit,”Ben Dechrai (after making the viewer take a pledge to only use this knowledge for good and not evil) walks through how many viruses operate, and just how easy it is to build your own self-replicating virus in PHP.

The danger of many of these viruses according to Ben is that the most dangerous viruses often escape detection by not looking like a virus. Instead they encrypt their code to hide their true intent, while also constantly adapting and evolving.

Perhaps even more dangerously, they act like they’re benign and don’t actually do anything - often times laying dormant until called upon by the malicious actor.

Creating the Virus

What’s scary is just how simple it was for Ben to create such a virus, one that mutated ever so slightly as it infected every other file on the server. Opening up unlimited possibilities from scraping customer data, to DDOS attacks, to simply hijacking your domain.



But those attacks are just the start as Ben demonstrated how easy it is to write new files, delete files, eval() and execute foreign code - which could even be extended to accessing the underlying server itself if shell_exec() is enabled.

To add to the problem, Ben shares how challenging it can be to identify malicious code on your server as many of these attacks are far more sophisticated than the the virus he created in a matter of minutes - hiding themselves and often appearing as if they are part of the original source code.

Deploying the Virus

To drive his point home, Ben demonstrates how even seemingly secure systems can be vulnerable - as all it takes is one tiny misstep within your application.

He highlights this by building what should be a secure photo gallery - one that checks the extension and mime-type of the image - and even stores it outside of the public directory. He goes even farther by adding additional sanity checks with a PHP script that then renders the image.

After walking through the code and it’s security features, he then downloads a simple image from the internet. Opening his editor he quickly injects the virus (written in PHP) into the image and uploads it, passing all of the server checks.

Surely, since it passed these checks the system is secure, right? Ben loads the gallery to proudly show off the image - which is just that… an image, with nothing special or out of the ordinary.
Except that when he opens the image gallery files, each has been infected with the malicious code.

The culprit that allowed for Ben to hijack an entire system and execute foreign code, create new files, and even hijack the entire site? When displaying the image the file was included using PHP’s include() function, instead of pulling in the data using file_get_contents() and echoing it out.

Such a simple mistake provided Ben, if he was a malicious hacker, complete access to all of the files on the system.

Protecting Yourself

Security always exists in layers - and this could have been prevented by including a few more layers, such as using an open source library to rewrite the image, reviewing the image source before pulling it in, or again not giving it executable access by using the PHP include() function.

But what’s terrifying is how simple it is to hijack a site, how easy it is to get access to your system and private data, and how easy it is to overlook security vulnerabilities - especially with open source tooling and those that take plugins.

As Ben explains, sometimes the core code itself is really secure, but then you get two different plugins that when used together accidentally create a security vulnerability. That by itself is one of the most challenging as you can audit each plugin individually, and still not know you’re opening up your system to malicious actors.

This is why it's not just important to stay up to date on the latest security measures and best practices, but to be constantly thinking like a hacker and testing your code for vulnerabilities.

Learn More

You can watch thefull video to learn more how viruses operate, how to quickly build your own PHP virus (but you must promise to use it for good), and what to watch for in order to protect yourself, your customers, and your architecture.

Ever wanted to publish your own extension for PHP but stopped by the lack of C language background? Well, maybe it's time for another take. Zephir language is targeted at people like you.

If you follow this link, you will find these words that say a lot about this project:

Zephir, an open source, high-level language designed to ease the creation and

maintainability of extensions for PHP with a focus on type and memory safety.

Its syntax highly resembles that of PHP, only there's no dollars scattered around your code. Dollar signs, I mean, the PHP $variables. You only can create object oriented extensions, and all the classes written in Zephir must be namespaced. A different and stricter type system exists in Zephir, which allows for transpiling the code you write, into a real C extension.

Why would you need it? This question is largely answered here: Why Zephir. I can only add that, from experience, if you expect a crazy performance boost, you probably won't get it. First, most of the time the bottleneck is not PHP but the IO: database interactions, network and filesystem interactions etc. You won't gain anything by switching to different programming language, in that regards. However, some CPU-intensive calculations may run a lot faster, and if you worry about someone stealing you intellectual property - it also might be worth checking out, because then you can ship your software in form of a binary.

Zephir is the language in which the fastest modern PHP framework is written - Phalcon. Whether or not to use it - decide for yourself, it obviously has its pros and cons. But it's certainly interesting to know that you have the ability to approach some of your tasks completely differently!

See you around, and feel free to comment!

Hey Friends,

I am sharing a very interesting blog on how to create a chat system in php without using ajax. As we all know ajax based chat system in php is not a good solution
because itincreases the server load and redundant xhr calls on our server.

Instead, I am going to use sockets for incoming messages from and send messages to another user. So lets try them out using the following steps:

Step 1: Cross check in php.ini that sockets extension is enabled

;extension=sockets
extension=sockets

Step 2: Create server.php file

This file will handle the incoming and outgoing messages on sockets, Add following variables in top of the file:

$host = 'localhost';
$port = '9000';
$null = NULL; 

Step 3: After it add helper methods

The following code for handshake with new incoming connections and encrypt and decrypt messages incoming and outgoing over sockets:

function send_message($msg)
{
global $clients;
foreach($clients as $changed_socket)
{
@socket_write($changed_socket,$msg,strlen($msg));
}
return true;
}
function unmask($text) {
$length = ord($text[1]) & 127;
if($length == 126) {
$masks = substr($text, 4, 4);
$data = substr($text, 8);
}
elseif($length == 127) {
$masks = substr($text, 10, 4);
$data = substr($text, 14);
}
else {
$masks = substr($text, 2, 4);
$data = substr($text, 6);
}
$text = "";
for ($i = 0; $i < strlen($data); ++$i) {
$text .= $data[$i] ^ $masks[$i%4];
}
return $text;
}
function mask($text)
{
$b1 = 0x80 | (0x1 & 0x0f);
$length = strlen($text);

if($length <= 125)
$header = pack('CC', $b1, $length);
elseif($length > 125 && $length < 65536)
$header = pack('CCn', $b1, 126, $length);
elseif($length >= 65536)
$header = pack('CCNN', $b1, 127, $length);
return $header.$text;
}
function perform_handshaking($receved_header,$client_conn, $host, $port)
{
$headers = array();
$lines = preg_split("/

/", $receved_header);
foreach($lines as $line)
{
$line = chop($line);
if(preg_match('/\A(\S+): (.*)\z/', $line, $matches))
{
$headers[$matches[1]] = $matches[2];
}
}
$secKey = $headers['Sec-WebSocket-Key'];
$secAccept = base64_encode(pack('H*', sha1($secKey . '258EAFA5-E914-47DA-95CA-C5AB0DC85B11')));
$upgrade = "HTTP/1.1 101 Web Socket Protocol Handshake

" .
"Upgrade: websocket

" .
"Connection: Upgrade

" .
"WebSocket-Origin: $host

" .
"WebSocket-Location: ws://$host:$port/php-ws/chat-daemon.php

".
"Sec-WebSocket-Accept:$secAccept



";
socket_write($client_conn,$upgrade,strlen($upgrade));
}

Step 4: Now add following code to create bind and listen tcp/ip sockets:

$socket = socket_create(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, SOL_TCP);
socket_set_option($socket, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, 1);
socket_bind($socket, 0, $port);
socket_listen($socket);
$clients = array($socket);

Ok now a endless loop that will use for handeling incominga nd send messages:

while (true) {
$changed = $clients;
socket_select($changed, $null, $null, 0, 10);

if (in_array($socket, $changed)) {
$socket_new = socket_accept($socket);	$clients[] = $socket_new; 
$header = socket_read($socket_new, 1024);	perform_handshaking($header, $socket_new, $host, $port); 
socket_getpeername($socket_new, $ip);	$response = mask(json_encode(array('type'=>'system', 'message'=>$ip.' connected')));	send_message($response); 
$found_socket = array_search($socket, $changed);
unset($changed[$found_socket]);
}

foreach ($changed as $changed_socket) {

while(socket_recv($changed_socket, $buf, 1024, 0) >= 1)
{
$received_text = unmask($buf);	$tst_msg = json_decode($received_text, true);	$user_name = $tst_msg['name'];	$user_message = $tst_msg['message'];	$user_color = $tst_msg['color']; 
$response_text = mask(json_encode(array('type'=>'usermsg', 'name'=>$user_name, 'message'=>$user_message, 'color'=>$user_color)));
send_message($response_text);	break 2;	}

$buf = @socket_read($changed_socket, 1024, PHP_NORMAL_READ);
if ($buf === false) {	$found_socket = array_search($changed_socket, $clients);
socket_getpeername($changed_socket, $ip);
unset($clients[$found_socket]);

$response = mask(json_encode(array('type'=>'system', 'message'=>$ip.' disconnected')));
send_message($response);
}
}
}
socket_close($socket);

So you are ready with server side socket program, Now its time to move on front side where we will implement w3c provided client side Web Socket Apis,

Step 5: create a file named index.php for frontend usage with following initial code

$host = 'localhost';
$port = '9000';
$subfolder = "php_ws/";
$colors = array('#007AFF','#FF7000','#FF7000','#15E25F','#CFC700','#CFC700','#CF1100','#CF00BE','#F00');
$color_pick = array_rand($colors);
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
</head>
<body>
<div class="chat-wrapper">
<div id="message-box"></div>
<div class="user-panel">
<input type="text" name="name" id="name" placeholder="Your Name" maxlength="15" />
<input type="text" name="message" id="message" placeholder="Type your message here..." maxlength="100" />
<button id="send-message">Send</button>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>

Now add some basic styling in the head section using following code:

<style type="text/css">
.chat-wrapper {
font: bold 11px/normal 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;
 background: #00a6bb;
 padding: 20px;
 margin: 20px auto;
 box-shadow: 2px 2px 2px 0px #00000017;
max-width:700px;
min-width:500px;
}
#message-box {
 width: 97%;
 display: inline-block;
 height: 300px;
 background: #fff;
 box-shadow: inset 0px 0px 2px #00000017;
 overflow: auto;
 padding: 10px;
}
.user-panel{
 margin-top: 10px;
}
input[type=text]{
 border: none;
 padding: 5px 5px;
 box-shadow: 2px 2px 2px #0000001c;
}
input[type=text]#name{
 width:20%;
}
input[type=text]#message{
 width:60%;
}
button#send-message {
 border: none;
 padding: 5px 15px;
 background: #11e0fb;
 box-shadow: 2px 2px 2px #0000001c;
}
</style>

Ok Style is all set now need to add a jquery script and create web socket object and handle all events on it as following code need to add before closing of bosy tag:

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> 
var msgBox = $('#message-box');
var wsUri = "ws://".$host.":".$port."/php-ws/server.php"; 
websocket = new WebSocket(wsUri); 

websocket.onopen = function(ev) {	msgBox.append('<div class="system_msg" style="color:#bbbbbb">Welcome to my "Chat box"!</div>');	}
websocket.onmessage = function(ev) {
var response	= JSON.parse(ev.data); 
var res_type	= response.type;	var user_message	= response.message;	var user_name	= response.name;	var user_color	= response.color;	switch(res_type){
case 'usermsg':
msgBox.append('<div><span class="user_name" style="color:' + user_color + '">' + user_name + '</span> : <span class="user_message">' + user_message + '</span></div>');
break;
case 'system':
msgBox.append('<div style="color:#bbbbbb">' + user_message + '</div>');
break;
}
msgBox[0].scrollTop = msgBox[0].scrollHeight;	};

websocket.onerror	= function(ev){ msgBox.append('<div class="system_error">Error Occurred - ' + ev.data + '</div>'); }; 
websocket.onclose	= function(ev){ msgBox.append('<div class="system_msg">Connection Closed</div>'); }; 
$('#send-message').click(function(){
send_message();
});

$( "#message" ).on( "keydown", function( event ) {
 if(event.which==13){
 send_message();
 }
});

function send_message(){
var message_input = $('#message');	var name_input = $('#name'); 
if(message_input.val() == ""){	alert("Enter your Name please!");
return;
}
if(message_input.val() == ""){	alert("Enter Some message Please!");
return;
}
var msg = {
message: message_input.val(),
name: name_input.val(),
color : '<?php echo $colors[$color_pick]; ?>'
};
websocket.send(JSON.stringify(msg));
message_input.val('');	}
</script>

Ok All set, Now need to run the server.php file using following php-cli utility,make sure you have php cli utility installed in your system:


php -q c:\xampp\htdocs\php-ws\server.php

Now you may access the front index.php file via the browser url like following and see a chatbox and connection status, you may use the same url or different browser to check the chat system is working or not.

For any development project to be successful, it’s important to choose the right technology and programming language. Most of the time, developers get confused about which programming language to choose.

Nowadays, PHP and Python have gained popularity among the programming languages for web development projects. However, choosing one between PHP vs Python is a difficult task. Recently, this has become a good topic for discussion.

Here, in this blog, we will compare the two popular programming languages: PHP vs Python. Let’s see which one turns out to be the best choice for web development.

What is Python?

Python is an open-source programming language developed in the year 1991 by Guido Van Rossum. It is one of the most commonly used languages due to its high level and easy-to-understand syntax.

According to the survey by Stack Overflow, Python is one of the most preferred programming languages. These Python app examples highlight its robustness and suitability for building scalable and innovative solutions across different platforms. Most of the companies and developers around the world are using Python web development.

What is PHP?

PHP or Hypertext Pre-processor, is an open-source server scripting language that is used for creating interactive and engaging web pages. This programming language comes with many features, libraries, plugins, and add-ons that increase community support and functionalities.

PHP language was developed by Rasmus Lerdorf in the year 1995. Earlier, PHP was named as Personal Home Page, which was later changed to Hypertext Pre-processor. An advantage of using PHP language is it supports all web browsers.

PHP is a practical, flexible, and fast programming language that can handle dynamic content on HTML sites, session tracking, and databases.

Features: PHP vs Python

PHP

* Open-source language, anyone can download and use it for free.
* PHP is easy to use and code than other programming languages.
* It is more efficient than other scripting languages like ASP and JSP.
* Offers access to log in by creating a summary of the recent user accesses.
* Provides database integration and supports distinct databases such as MySQL and Oracle.
* It has predefined error-reporting constants that generate warning or error messages.

Python

* Python is an easy-to-learn programming language.
* Provides an ideal structure and support for large applications.
* It can operate on different hardware platforms utilizing the same user interface.
* Python can be integrated with C, C++, and Java programming code.
* It’s easy to incorporate low-level modules in Python interpreter.
* Python offers high-level dynamic types of data and support for dynamic type checking.
* Its features support automatic garbage collection.
* It supports an interactive mode of testing and debugging.

Pros and Cons: PHP vs Python

Here, we will compare the pros and cons of PHP vs python for web development.

Pros of PHP

* Has a large ecosystem.
* Flexible and platform-independent.
* Several open-source PHP frameworks are available to use for free.
* Offers many pluggable frameworks, Open-source and object-oriented.
* Supports different database interfaces such as No SQL, PostgreSQL, and so on.
* It is supported by many operating systems and works cross-platform.
* Encourages top-notch debugging.
* Provides in-built SQL support.
* Offers support for database collection modules.
* It supports all operating systems like Windows, Linux, and UNIX.

Cons of PHP

* Delayed and wired performance.
* Not apt for content-based applications.
* Utilizes weak typing that can lead to false knowledge and data to users.
* Its core behavior can’t be changed.
* There’s no IOT alliance.
* Fewer security protocols and features.

Pros of Python

* Easy to learn and maintain.
* An open-source and uniformly unfolding language.
* Enables cross-platform code reusability.
* Object-oriented and versatile language to deploy.
* Offers WORA functionality.
* Helps in developing GUI apps.
* Has automatic garbage collection.
* It can be integrated easily with other languages, such as Java or C++.
* Provides libraries like Tenseorflow for math-intensive tasks.

Cons of Python

* Creates delays in web app testing.
* It utilizes an enormous amount of memory to help developers in easy development.
* Operates slower than other web development languages.
* Not of much use in mobile computing browsers and mobile app development.
* It has dynamic typing, which makes error detection more difficult.
* It’s too large for a simple and small app or website.
* Run time errors occurs due to duck typing.

When Should You Select PHP?

PHP is a commonly used server-side scripting language among developers. The best use cases in which you should select PHP:
* For developing blogs, websites, and web applications.
* Work effectively on the server side.
* Less investment.

When Should You Select Python?

* Python programming language has gained popularity in recent times. Below we have given some of the best cases in which you should choose Python.
* For operating in the areas of robotics and data science.
* When you want accurate and extensive data analytics.
* Developing websites using the Django framework.

Why opt for PHP?

Here, we will give you some reasons why you should opt for the PHP programming language.
* Open-source language, easy to download and use.
* Easy to learn and operates effectively on the server side.
* This scripting language can run on distinct platforms such as Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and UNIX.
* It’s compatible with every server, like IIS, Apaches, and so on.
* Supports a broad range of databases.

Why opt for Python?

As you know, there are many advantages and disadvantages of using Python. Here, we will tell you why you should choose Python for web development.
* Python language is easy to use and maintain.
* Python syntax is quick to understand and debug as well. Therefore, its source code is easier to maintain.
* It has a garbage collection feature and memory addresses accordingly.
* It comes with many pre-built libraries.
* Python supports GUI apps such as Django, Tkinter, WXPython, etc.
* It’s a versatile and portable language. You can run Python on different types of operating systems or platforms.
* Python comes with a database-friendly interface that can store a colossal amount of data for commercial DBMS systems.
* It has an interactive shell that helps in unit testing before deploying a product.

Comparison: PHP vs Python

Above, we have given the features and pros & cons of PHP vs Python. In this section, we will give you a comparison between PHP vs Python in accordance with different parameters.

Parameters
Python
PHP
Release
    .
    .
Learning curve
Easier
Steep
Language type
Specialized for web development
General purpose programming language
Syntax
Clear & concise
Complex
Security
High
Medium
Readability
High
Low
Database connectivity
Faster
Slower
Debugging
Fast
Slower
Performance
Lesser support
Faster
Supported Frameworks
Flask, Django, Web2Py
Laravel, Zend, Codelgniter
GitHub Stars
    . 9k
    . 5k
TIOBE Rating
    . st position
    . th position
Forks
    . 5 k
    . 9k
Major Users
Instagram, YouTube, Quora, Reddit
Facebook, Yahoo, Flickr, Tumblr


This comprehensive comparison between PHP vs Python can help you to choose the right language for web development. Now, we will compare some other elements that would give you a clear picture of both PHP vs Python.

1. Ease of Learning

Python is an easier language to learn compared to PHP. If you are a beginner, then Python is a good choice as you can learn it quickly. Python programs are shorter as well as easy to write in comparison to other languages.

PHP programming language is made for creating sophisticated web apps. It’s not a general-purpose language, and it takes time to learn it.

2. Ease of Use

Python is an open-source programming language that is versatile and portable. Python’s syntax is simple, and coding is easy to learn compared to PHP. But PHP is not just an ordinary programming language it’s used for creating dynamic web pages with HTML. This makes PHP more difficult to use than Python.

3. Community Support

Both PHP and Python provide good community support. PHP has been in the market for a long time and has a large community of developers. Therefore, you can immediately get support if you opt for PHP.

However, there are even many Python developers who constantly develop python apps. So, the community support in Python is also good. Consequently, we can’t say whether PHP or Python is better at providing community support.

4. Flexibility

Nowadays, web apps backed by Machine Learning are in high demand. Also, ML is a significant part of Python. Python provides many machine-learning libraries, such as Tensorflow, Theano, Pandas, and Scikit-learn. Additionally, these libraries are rapid, unique, & robust and work effectively with a web framework.

Nonetheless, Python programming language can be used in many other fields apart from web development. But when it comes to PHP, it’s best for web development. Therefore, we can say Python is a better choice here.

Our skilled developers delivers the most promising web development firms to make dynamic websites for your business.

5. Speed to Market

Python provides a comprehensive set of modules and third-party libraries to help developers finish the project faster. One of the popular web frameworks written in Python is Django. It utilizes the MVC pattern to allow developers to create apps fast using a significant division of concerns and reusability.

PHP also has a vast set of tools, frameworks, and libraries. Laravel is a popular PHP framework that allows the MVC pattern. Additionally, it comes with many helpful functionalities for web development, like routing, templating, authentication, and so on.

6. Web Frameworks

You get robust and well-designed web development frameworks both in PHP and Python. Most of the big businesses utilize web frameworks that PHP provides. For example, Laravel and Symfony are mature web frameworks, and a huge community supports them. So, we can say PHP makes web development easy.

Python also has many exceptional frameworks that are highly scalable, easy to use, fast and secure. It’s two most popular web frameworks are Flask and Django. If you want a shorter development period, then you can choose Django over PHP-based frameworks.

7. Library Management

Python uses Pip to handle and deal with packages. Pip ensures that Python app development is easy, rapid, and meets development needs. Python has powerful library management compared to PHP. It has a wide range of packages and tools that assist and make web app development easier. So, in terms of library management, Python clearly wins it.

8. Security

When it comes to security, most businesses prefer using Python. For instance, Django offers many pre-built security features that aid in safeguarding the apps from distinct security breaches & threats.

Apart from that, many government organizations rely on Python as their secret hacking tool. Most of the security problems are addressed by its large community support. However, PHP is less strong than Python in aspects of security.

9. Environment Management

In terms of handling environments, Python is the best programming language. It has a Virtualenv system that aids in installing different versions of the language and switching between them immediately.
PHP has no comparison with Python when it comes to handling environments. There’s an analog of PHP, VirtPHP, but it’s archived and not maintained. Therefore, most of the developers opt for Python.

10. Debugging

Python has an in-built debugger called Python Debugger or PDB. It utilizes many debugging strategies. PDB enables dynamic typing and lets developers work effortlessly without stating things at the start of a program.
PHP also comes with an XDebug package for handling bugs and error-checking the codes. But PHP development is quite slow in identifying and removing bugs. Therefore, it often experiences security issues.

The Bottom Line PHP vs Python: Which One You Choose for Web Development?

From the blog, you must have inferred that both PHP and Python are good for web development. However, there are many aspects in which Python wins over PHP. But this doesn’t mean that you only have to opt for Python. The selection of programming language majorly depends on the complexity and needs of the project.

Sphinx Solutions is a leading and trusted web app development company. Our team of web developers can help you create the best web apps for your business based on your specifications. Schedule a call with our experts to get an estimation for your web app development project, or email us at [email protected].

PHP vs Python: FAQs

1. Why choose Python over PHP?
Python is chosen over PHP for web app development due to many reasons, such as ease to use, simple syntax, flexibility, security, high performance, etc.
2. Which programming language is secure: PHP vs Python?
Python is a preferred programming language when it comes to security as it has many security features compared to PHP.
3. Why is Python used mostly?
Python is a general-purpose programming language and is utilized in web development, mobile app development, AI, ML, game development, big data, and so on.
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PHP is an incredibly powerful programming languaage, one that powers roughly 80% of the web! But it's also one of the easier languages to learn as you can see your changes in real time, without having to compile or wait for the code to repackage your app or website.

Defining a PHP script

To get started, create a file called "myfirstpage.php." You can actually call it anything you'd like, but the important part here is the extension: .php. This tells the server to treat this page as a PHP script.

Now let's go ahead and create a basic HTML page:

<html>

<head>

<title>Hello</title>

</head>

<body>

Hello

</body>

</html>

Go ahead and save your page and upload it to any host that supports PHP. Now visit your page and you should see a page that outputs "Hello."

Echo content

Now let's add some PHP code to our script. To signal the server to render PHP code we first open with the <?php tag, then we write our PHP code, and finally close it with the ?> tag. This is important as if we were creating an XML file and forgot to escape the opening XML tag which also has a question mark, we would run into a fatal error.

Now let's write some PHP code that tells the server to echo specific output. To echo or print the content on the page we can use the echo statement in our PHP code by placing the text we want to echo in single quotes and then end the command with a semi colon. Let's echo out "there!":

<html>

<head>

<title>Hello</title>

</head>

<body>

Hello <?php echo 'there!'; ?>

</body>

</html>

Now upload your script and test it on your webhost. You should now see "Hello there!" on your screen. Now this isn't as exciting since we could do the same thing in HTML without PHP, so let's create dynamic content based on the URL string.

Using $_GET

PHP allows you to interact with your visitors and handle incoming data. This means that you can use either the URL (querystring) or forms to retrieve user input. There are additional ways to access data as well, but we will not be covering those in this introduction.

In your browser, add the following to the end of your url: ?name=yourname

The full URL should now look like myfirstpage.php?name=yourname

You'll notice when you visit this page nothing happens - so let's change that! To access the value of name in the querystring, we can use $_GET['name'] like so:

<html>

<head>

<title>Hello</title>

</head>

<body>

Hello <?php echo $_GET['name']; ?>

</body>

</html>

You'll notice that unlike the text "there!" that the GET is not in quotes - this is because this is a variable and by not placing it in quotes we're telling PHP to render this as a variable and not as text. If we leave the single quotes, instead of saying "Hello yourname" it would say "Hello $_GET['name']."

Using logic and defining variables

Along with getting user input, you can also create conditions to determine what content should be output. For example, we can determine whether or not to say "Good morning" or "Good evening" depending on the time, along with your name using the querystring.

To do this, we'll be using if, elseif, and else along with the PHP date() function. You can learn more about how to use different date formats to output the date here, but we'll be using the date() function to get back the hour of the day (based on the server's time) between 0 (midnight) and 23 (11pm). We'll then use greater than (>) to determine what to assign to our $time variable which we'll output with the user's name.

<html>

<head>

<title>Hello</title>

</head>

<body>

<?php

if(date("G") > 18) {

$time = 'evening';

} elseif (date("G") > 12) {

$time = 'afternoon';

} else {

$time = 'morning';

}

echo 'Good '.$time.' '.$_GET['name'];

?>

</body>

</html>

Now upload your script again to the web server and refresh the page. Depending on the time of the server you should see either Good morning, Good afternoon, or Good evening followed by your name.

If you get an error, or the page is blank, make sure you have closed all of your quotes and have a semicolon after your statements/ commands. Missing a quote or semicolon is one of the most common causes of PHP errors.

You may also receive an error if the timezone has not been set on your server. To resolve this (or change the timezone/ output of the script) try adding this line as the first line following the opening PHP bracket (<?php):

date_default_timezone_set('America/Los_Angeles');

With that you have created your first PHP script and have already taken advantage of many of the fundamentals used in every PHP program. While there is more to learn you are well on your way, and have a great start on defining variables, using user input, and taking advantage of PHP's built in functions.


Want more? Go even further with our Beginning PHP video training course!