Introduction to PHP for Web Development: Hands-On

Those creating dynamic, database-driven websites who have experience with HTML and exposure to basic programming terminology.

• Create reusable, structured PHP code that separates logic from presentation
• Develop modular applications that allow use of drop-in modules
• Leverage MySQL for database-driven web applications
• Apply authentication and access control capabilities to web applications
• Employ PHP sessions to maintain the state of web applications

Introduction to PHP

Web services architectures and PHP

• Origins of PHP in the open source community
• Leveraging the PHP development environment checklist
• Exploring a typical PHP application execution

PHP conventions

• Defining PHP language conventions
• Examining common PHP coding techniques
• Exploring better architectures for PHP application development
• Investigating PHP variable and data types

Implementing PHP Code

Leveraging variables and arrays

• Storing values in scalar variables
• Employing ordinary and associative arrays
• Embedding PHP code into HTML pages

User-defined and built-in functions

• Writing user-defined functions to structure your code
• Passing arguments and default values to functions
• Returning data from functions
• Incorporating external PHP scripts with require and require_once

Employing PHP loops and conditional expressions

• Writing conditional expressions
• Implementing loops such as while and foreach
• Building complete scripts that incorporate loops and conditional expressions

Exploiting the built-in functionality of PHP

• Manipulating string data
• Reading and writing data using file I/O functions
• Redirecting users to different web pages
• Controlling script execution

Interacting with the Client

Incorporating user input

• Determining how data is sent from forms to PHP scripts
• Retrieving form data with $_POST and $_GET arrays
• Validating retrieved data
• Strategies for handling invalid input

Responding to user input

• Storing state information using PHP sessions
• Presenting the user with input options via different HTML form elements

Applying conditional redirection

• Examining state information from sessions
• Determining application context based upon state information
• Applying conditional logic to the correct contextual page

Building Complete Database-Driven, Secure Web Applications

Crafting database connections

• Connecting to MySQL
• Leveraging MySQL-related PHP functions to retrieve and manipulate data
• Storing secure passwords with MySQL
• Encrypting user passwords using strong encryption methods

Applying authentication and access control

• Creating user registration forms
• Validating registration by password comparison
• Storing secured user credentials in a MySQL database table
• Authenticating users against MySQL database queries
• Persisting user data in PHP sessions for subsequent application accesses
• Controlling access to various site capabilities with session stored data

Protecting from Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks and layout changes

• Discovering how XSS attacks occur
• Implementing basic protections against XSS attacks
• Preventing user input from affecting page layout

Extending Functionality with PHP

Debugging and deploying

• Discovering common PHP coding problems
• Exploring methods of debugging PHP
• Suppressing on-screen error messages on production servers
• Considering deployment configuration and security
• Configuring the php.ini file to control error messages