Spring Into PHP 5

This is the PHP 5 entry in the new Spring Into series. It is written in the unique, structured style of Spring Into books. Each chapter begins with introductory text, followed by a single-page or facing-page tutorial. Every chapter is semi-autonomous, and focuses on an example or set of examples allowing the reader to quickly learn and apply. The discussions are to the point and emphasize results without extraneous coding. In 350 pages, Spring Into PHP 5 is designed to give professionals the skills they need to be productive with PHP 5--quickly--by covering dozens of chunks in rapid-fire format. PHP is clearly emerging as the most popular language for the creation of web applications. PHP 5 is the next major revision of the language. It provides a top-notch object system that behaves the way traditional heavyweight languages do, as well as real exceptions. In addition to these language additions, PHP 5 offers robust XML processing, improved MySQL and SQLite database support and a large number of improvements to areas of efficiency, extensibility and security. According to Netcraft's August 2004 survey, over 16 million domains run PHP. By comparison, Netcraft reports 2.5 million domains running ASP.Net.

Table of Contents:
Preface. About the Author. About the Series Editor. 1. Essential PHP.     Getting PHP.     Setting Up Your Development Environment.     Creating Your First PHP Script.     Running Your First PHP Script.     What If It Doesn’t Work?     Mixing In Some HTML.     How About Printing Out Some Text?     More Printing Power.     Printing “Here” Documents.     Running PHP on the Command Line.     Commenting Your Scripts.     Getting a Handle on Data: Variables.     Assigning Values to Variables.     Interpolating Variables in Strings.     Creating Variable Variables.     Creating Constants.     Handling Data Types.     Summary. 2. Gaining Control with Operators and Flow Control.     The Math Operators.     The Math Functions.     The Assignment Operators.     Incrementing and Decrementing.     Operator Precedence.     The Execution Operator.     String Operators.     Bitwise Operators.     Using if Statements.     The Comparison Operators.     Logical Operators.     Using else Statements.     Using elseif Statements.     The Ternary Operator.     Using switch Statements.     Working with for Loops.     Working with while Loops.     Working with do...while Loops.     Working with foreach Loops.     Breaking Out of Loops.     Skipping Interactions with continue.     Some Alternative Syntax.     Summary. 3. Handling Strings and Arrays.     Listing of String Functions.     Using the String Functions.     Formatting Strings.     Converting to and from Strings.     Creating Arrays.     Modifying Arrays.     Removing Array Elements.     Looping Over Arrays.     Listing of the Array Functions.     Sorting Arrays.     Navigating through Arrays.     Imploding and Exploding Arrays.     Extracting Variables from Arrays.     Merging and Splitting Arrays.     Comparing Arrays.     Manipulating the Data in Arrays.     Creating Multidimensional Arrays.     Looping Over Multidimensional Arrays.     Using the Array Operators.     Summary. 4. Breaking It Up: Functions.     Creating a Function.     Passing Data to Functions.     Passing Arrays to Functions.     Setting Up Default Argument Values.     Passing Arguments by Reference.     Creating Variable-Length Argument Lists.     Returning Values from Functions.     Returning Arrays from Functions.     Returning Lists from Functions.     Returning References from Functions.     Using Variable Scope.     Getting Global Access.     Using Static Variables.     Creating Variable Functions.     Creating Conditional Functions.     Creating Functions within Functions.     Using Include Files.     Handling Errors Returned by Functions.     Summary. 5. Handling HTML Controls in Web Pages.     Handling User Data with Web Forms.     Creating Text Fields.     Retrieving Data from Text Fields.     Creating Text Areas.     Creating Checkboxes.     Creating Radio Buttons.     Creating Listboxes.     Creating Hidden Controls.     Creating Password Controls.     Creating Image Maps.     Uploading Files.     Reading Uploaded Files.     Creating Buttons: Take 1.     Creating Buttons: Take 2.     Creating Buttons: Take 3.     Summary. 6. Creating Web Forms and Validating User Input.     Displaying All a Form’s Data At Once.     Useful Server Variables.     Useful HTTP Headers.     Determining Browser Type with HTTP Headers.     Redirecting Users with HTTP Headers.     Receiving Form Data in Custom Arrays.     Web Applications Using a Single PHP Page.     Validating User Data.     Validating Data: Requiring Data Entry.     Validating Data: Checking for Numbers.     Validating Data: Checking for Strings.     Removing HTML Tags.     Encoding HTML Tags.     Preserving Data.     Using JavaScript to Validate Data.     Using HTTP Authentication.     Summary. 7. Object Oriented Programming and File Handling.     Working with Classes and Objects.     Creating a Class.     Creating an Object.     Restricting Access to Properties and Methods.     Initializing Objects with Constructors.     Basing One Class on Another: Inheritance.     Using Protected Inheritance.     Overriding Methods.     Accessing Base Class Methods.     Opening a File: fopen.     Reading Lines of Text: fgets.     Reading Characters: fgetc.     Binary Reading: fread.     Reading a Whole File: file_get_contents.     Parsing a File: fscanf.     Writing to a File: fwrite.     Appending to a File: fwrite.     Writing the File at Once: file_put_contents.     Summary. 8. Working with Databases.     What Are Databases?     Some Basic SQL.     Setting Up Database Support in PHP.     Creating a Database Using MySQL.     Adding Data to the Database.     Accessing a MySQL Database.     Displaying a Data Table.     Updating Your Data.     Inserting New Data.     Deleting Data.     Creating a New Table.     Creating a Database.     Sorting Data.     Getting the PEAR DB Module.     Displaying a Table with DB.     Inserting New Data with DB.     Updating Data with DB.     Summary. 9. Cookies, Sessions, FTP, Email, and More.     Setting Cookies.     Getting Cookies.     Setting a Cookie’s Expiration Time.     Deleting Cookies.     Using FTP.     FTP: Getting a Directory Listing.     FTP: Downloading a File.     FTP: Uploading a File.     Sending Email.     Sending Email with Headers.     Sending Email with Attachments.     Working with Sessions.     Storing Session Data.     Creating a Hit Counter.     Using Sessions Without Cookies.     Removing Data in Sessions.     Summary. Appendix A: PHP Language Elements. Appendix B: PHP Function Reference. Index.