Lecture 6.

PHP: Part 1

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Origins and Uses of PHP
 Developed by Rasmus Lerdorf, a member of the Apache
Group, in 1994 to track visitors to his Web site

 PHP‟s development was transferred to a small group of

devoted volunteers and now is an open-source product

 PHP is originally an acronym for Personal Home Page, later

PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor

 PHP, as a server-side scripting language, is used for form

handling, file processing, and database access
 has driver support for 15 database systems
 supports electronic mail protocols POP3 and IMAP
 supports distributed object architectures COM and CORBA

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Overview of PHP
 PHP is a server-side scripting language whose scripts are
embedded in HTML documents
 Similar to JavaScript, but on the server side
 PHP is an alternative to CGI, Active Server Pages (ASP),
and Java Server Pages (JSP)
 Filename extension is .php, .php3, or .phtml
 PHP syntax is similar to that of JavaScript
 PHP is dynamically typed
 PHP has an extensive library of functions, making a flexible
and powerful
 http://www.php.net

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Overview of PHP
 The PHP processor has two modes: copy (XHTML) and
interpret (PHP).
 PHP processor takes a PHP document as input and
produces an XHTML document file
 When it finds XHTML code in the input file, simply
copies it to the output file
 When it finds PHP script, it interprets it and send any
output of the script to the output file
 This new output file is sent to the requesting browser.
 The client never sees the PHP script.

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Operation Overview

Request
a page

Web browser Web Server

Transfer
XHTML file Request
Client data Generate
processing XHMTL file

Other
Server PHP Engine DB
Platform

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General Syntactic Characteristics
 PHP code can be specified in an HTML document
internally or externally:

Internally: <?php
...
?>

Externally: include ("myScript.inc")

 The included file can contain XHTML or client-side

script as well as PHP
 If the file has PHP, the PHP must be in <?php ... ?>,
even if the include appears in <?php ... ?>

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General Syntactic Characteristics
 All variable names begin with $
 The name part is like the names of variables in many
programming languages: a letter or an underscore
followed by any number of letters, digits, or underscores
 PHP variables are case sensitive, but reserved words
and function names are not. (Table 12.1)
(Ex) while, WHILE, While, and wHiLe are same
 Comments - three different kinds (Java and Perl)
(a) // ... ; for single line
(b) # ... ; for single line
(c) /* ... */ ; for multiple-line

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PHP Reserved Words

and else function not this

break elseif global or true

case extends if require var

class false include return virtual

continue for list static xor

default foreach new switch while

do

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General Syntactic Characteristics
 PHP statements are terminated with semicolons.
 Compound statements for control structures are
formed with braces
 Unless used as the body of a function definition,
compound statements cannot be blocks
 They cannot define locally scoped variables

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Example

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PHP TYPES

 Four scalar types

 Boolean
 Integer
 Double
 String

 Two compound types

 Array
 Object*

 Two special types

 NULL
 Resource*
* will not be covered here.
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Variables
 There are no type declarations because of dynamic typing

 The type of a variable is set every time it is assigned a value

 An unassigned ( unbound ) variable has the value, NULL

 A variable of NULL in the expression will be coerced to a value

dictated by the context of the use
(Ex) If a number, NULL is coerced to 0
If a string, NULL is coerced to the empty string

 The unset function sets a variable to NULL

 The IsSet function tests whether a variable is NULL
(Ex) IsSet ( $fruit ) returns TRUE if $fruit has non-NULL value

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Variables
 If you prefer to be informed when an unbound variable
is referenced, place the error_reporting(15) at the
beginning of the script in the document file

 The error_reporting function is used to change the error –

reporting level of the PHP interpreter

 The default error-reporting level is 7

 PHP has many predefined variables, including the

environment variables of the host operating system

 You can get a list of the predefined variables by

calling phpinfo() in a script

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primitive types
 Integer type corresponds to the long type of C and its
successors

 Double type corresponds to the double type of C and

its successors. Decimal point, an exponent, or both.

 There is no character type

 A single character data value is a string of length one

 Strings
 Characters are single bytes
 String literals use single (′)or double quotes(″)

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Example

 Integer

$var = 1234; // Decimal

$var = -1234; // Decimal
$var = 01234; // Octal
$var = 0x1234; // Hexadecimal

 Floating point

$a = 1.234; // Float
$a = 0.1234e1; // Exponential

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String
 Single-quoted string literals
 Embedded variables are NOT interpolated
(Ex) „The sum is: $sum‟ = The sum is: $sum
 Embedded escape sequences are NOT recognized

 Double-quoted string literals

 Embedded variables ARE interpolated
(Ex) “The sum is: $sum” = The sum is: 12.4
 If there is a variable name in a double-quoted string but
you don‟t want it interpolated, it must be backslashed
 Embedded escape sequences ARE recognized

 For both single- and double-quoted literal strings,

embedded delimiters must be backslashed
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Special character

Special char. Semantics

＼n new line
＼r Return carriage
＼t Tab
＼＼ Backslash
＼$ Dollar
＼” Quotation mark

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Boolean

 The only two possible values are TRUE and FALSE

(case insensitive)

 If an integer expression is used in Boolean context, it

is FALSE if it is zero; otherwise, it is TRUE.

 If a string expression is used in Boolean context, it is

FALSE if it is either the empty string or the string "0";
otherwise, it is TRUE.

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Arithmetic Operators and Expressions
 +, -, *, /, %, ++, --

 For +,- and *, if either operand is double, then it

produces a double result

 If the result of integer division is not an integer, a

double is returned

 Any integer operation that results in overflow produces

a double

 The modulus operator (%) coerces its non-integer

operands to integer

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Predefined Functions

Functi Paramet
Returns
on er
floor Double Largest integer less than or equal to the parameter

ceil Smallest integer greater than or equal to the

Double parameter
round Double Nearest integer
srand Integer Initializes a random number generator with the
parameter
rand Two A pseudorandom number greater than the first
numbers parameter and smaller than the second
abs Integer or Absolute value of the parameter
double
min Numbers Smallest
max Numbers Largest
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String Operations and Functions
 The only operator is period(.) for catenation
 String variables can be treated like arrays for access to
individual characters
 The position can be specified in braces
(Ex) If $str has “apples”, $str{3} is the fourth (l)
 Functions:
 strlen, strcmp, strpos, substr, as in C
 chop – remove whitespace from the right end
 trim – remove whitespace from both ends
 ltrim – remove whitespace from the left end
 strtolower, strtoupper

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String functions

Function Parameter Returns

strlen A string The no. of characters in the string
strcmp Two strings 0, negative, or positive number
strpos Two strings The character position...
substr A string and The substring of the string, starting from
an integer the second parameter (possibly, third
parameter for length)
chop A string Remove all whitespace from its end
trim A string Remove all whitespace from both ends
ltrim A string Remove all whitespace from its begin
strtolower A string All uppercase letters converted to
lowercase
strtoupper A string All lowercase letters converted to
uppercase
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Example
$str = “Apples are good”;
$sub = substr ($str, 7, 1);

The value of $sub is „a‟.

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Scalar Type Conversions
 Implicit type conversions (coercions)
 The context of an expression determines the type that is
expected or required
 When a numeric value appears in string context, the
numeric value is coerced to a string
 When a string value appears in numeric context, the
string value is coerced to a number.

 String to numeric
 If the string contains an e or an E, it is converted to
double; otherwise to integer
 If the string does not begin with a sign or a digit, the
conversion fails and zero is used
 Nonnumeric characters following the number in the
string are ignored.
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Scalar Type Conversions
 Explicit type conversions in three different ways
 Using cast: (type_name) exp
(Ex) $total = 4.333; (int) $total // 4
 Using function: intval, doubleval, strval
(Ex) $total = 4.333; intval($total) // 4
 Using settype function: settype (variable, type_name)
(Ex) settype($total, "integer") // 4

 The type of a variable can be determined with gettype

or type testing functions
 gettype($total) - returns the type of the current value.
It may return "unknown"
 is_integer($total), is_float(), is_bool(), is_string()
– a predicate function
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Output
 Any output from a PHP script becomes part of the
document the PHP processor is building
 An output from a PHP script is in the form of XHTML
that is sent to the browser
 XHTML is sent to the browser through standard output
 There are three ways to produce output :
 echo
 print
 printf

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Output
 echo function
 If parentheses are included, only a single string parameter
is acceptable
 Otherwise, any number of parameters are acceptable
(Ex) echo "whatever", "it may <br />";
echo ("first <br />") ;
 returns no value
 echo and print take a string, but coerce other values
to strings
(Ex) echo 47 or print(47) will produce 47

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Output
 print function:
 Called with only one parameter, possibly in a parenthesis
(Ex) print "Welcome to my site!";
 Will coerce non-string type value to a string
 Return a value (1 if successful, 0 otherwise)

 printf function
 Is like its counterpart in C
 Can control the format of displayed data completely
(Ex) $day = “Tuesday”;
$high = 79;
printf (“The high on %7s was %3d”, $day, $high);
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Example
<!-- today.php: An example to illustrate a php document -->
<html>
<head> <title> today.php </title>
</head>
<body>
<p>
<?php
print “<b>Welcome to my home page <br /><br />”;
print “Today is: “;
print date(“l, F jS”);
print “<br />”;
?>
</p>
</body>
Welcome to my home page
</html>
Today is: Saturday, June 1st
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Control Statements
 Relational Operators
 Use eight relational operators of JavaScript
 > , < , >= , <= , != , == , === , !==
 For string op number
 If the string converted to a number, do numeric
comparison
 If the string not converted to a number, do string
comparison
 For string op string
 If both converted to numbers, do numeric comparison
 Boolean operators
 (and , &&), (or , ||) , xor , !
 The precedence of and and or is higher than that of &&
and || 30
Control Statements
 Selection statements
 if, if-else, elseif
 switch - as in C
 while - just like C
 do-while - just like C
 for - just like C
 foreach - discussed later
 break - in any for, foreach, while, do-while, or switch
 continue - in any loop

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Alternative compound delimiters
 Applicable to if, switch, for, and while control
statements
 Opening delimiter is the colon with its own closing
reserved word
 More readable.

while ($a < 100) { while ($a < 100) :

$a = $a * $b + 7; $a = $a * $b + 7;
$b++; $b++;
} endwhile;

 SHOW powers.html

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Example
if ($day ==== “Saturday” || $day == “Sunday”)
$today = “weekend”;
else {
$today = “weekday”;
$work = true;
}

switch ($bordersize) {
case “0”: print “<table>”; break;
case “1”: print “<table border = „1‟>”; break;
case “4”: print “<table border = „4‟>”; break;
case “8”: print “<table border = „8‟>”; break;
default: print “Error-invalid value: $bordersize <br />”;
}
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Example

$fact = 1;
$count = 1;
while ($count < $n) {
$count ++;
$fact *= $count;
}

for ($count = 1, $fact = 1; $count < $n) {

$count++;
$fact *= $count;
}

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HTML/PHP document

 HTML can be intermingled with PHP script

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Example

<!-- powers.php
An example to illustrate loops and arithmetic -->
<html>
<head><title> powers.php </title>
</head>
<body>
<table border = "border">
<caption> Powers table </caption>
<tr>
<th> Number </th>
<th> Square Root </th>
<th> Square </th>
<th> Cube </th>
<th> Quad </th>
</tr>
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<?php
for ($number = 1; $number <=10; $number++) {
$root = sqrt($number);
$square = pow($number, 2);
$cube = pow($number, 3);
$quad = pow($number, 4);
print("<tr align = 'center'> <td> $number </td>");
print("<td> $root </td> <td> $square </td>");
print("<td> $cube </td> <td> $quad </td> </tr>");
}
?>
</table>
</body>
</html>

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Result

Powers table
Number Square Root Square Cube Quad
1 1 1 1 1
2 1.4142125623731 4 8 16
3 1.7320508075689 9 27 81
4 2 16 64 256
5
6
7
8
9
10

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PHP in HTML
 HTML
<html>
<body>
<h1> PHP </h1><br>
<h2> Programming </h2>
</body>
</html>

 PHP in HTML
<html>
<body>
<?php
print(“<h1> PHP </h1><br>”);
print(“<h2> Programming </h2>”);
?>
</body>
</html>
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PHP in HTML
 Using variable

<?php
$time = date(“Y - m - d - H : i : s ”);
?>
<html>
<body>
<?php
// Print current time...
print(“<h2> Current time is $time. </h2>”);
?>
</body>
</html>

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