This two-day course is designed to follow on from the “Programming Foundations” course, which would be a pre-requisite (or equivalent programming experience). It will discuss what PHP is used for, explore how fundamental programming concepts are implemented and introduce some practical uses for PHP scripting. The aim of the course is for delegates to develop the skills, knowledge and understanding to be able to construct a simple website that will allow a user to log in and authenticate the data supplied and react to the result.
Prerequisites
- Delegates MUST have HTML and CSS skills equivalent to those provided by the Web Development Fundamentals – HTML and CSS course.
- Familiarity with programming would be beneficial, we recommend Programming Foundations to new developers.
- Delegates MUST have HTML and CSS skills equivalent to those provided by the Web Development Fundamentals – HTML and CSS course.
- Familiarity with programming would be beneficial, we recommend Programming Foundations to new developers.
Target Audience:
The course is aimed at anyone who wants to learn web development and perhaps progress into using PHP as a backend server scripting language. It is suitable for those who are relatively new to programming, or experienced developers skilled in other languages who need to learn the nuances of PHP.
- Have an understanding of the history of PHP
- Have a basic understanding of the roles of client-side and server-side scripting, HTML and CSS in web development
- Have a basic understanding of the technologies used in server-side scripting
- Understand PHP syntax and how to output to the screen
- Be able to use variables and operators
- Be aware of different types of error messages
- Be able to use different data structures in PHP including arrays and strings
- Be aware of pre-defined PHP functions and be able to use some of them
- Be able to write custom functions
- Understand the basic structure of HTTP requests and use PHP superglobals
- Have an awareness of PHP sessions and cookies
Programming for the Web
- DEMO: Web Site (the production of which is the goal of the course)
- A brief history of PHP
- Scripting, the PHP Interpreter and Web Programming (Client Side / Server Side)
- A basic introduction to HTML and CSS
PHP Variables and Operators
- PHP Syntax
- Outputting
- Variables and Types
- Operators
- Error Messages
PHP Flow of Control (including Conditionals and Loops)
- Conditionals and control flow
- If statement
- Switch statement
- Ternary and Short-Ternary statements
- While and do-while loops
- For loops
PHP Arrays
- Using the var_dump(), empty() and isset() functions
- Sequential arrays
- Associative arrays
- Looping with arrays
PHP Strings
- Strings as arrays
- Handling and formatting strings
- Comparing strings
- Using regular expressions in PHP
- Splitting strings
PHP Predefined Functions
- HTML Entity Codes
- HTML functions
- Array sorting, merging, splitting, iterating and transforming
- Filter functions
PHP Custom Functions
- Defining functions with arguments
- Calling functions with arguments
- Returning values from functions
- Other function features
- Closures and callbacks
- Variable scope
PHP Superglobals and HTTP
- The HTTP Protocol
- GET, POST, PUT, DELETE
- The Superglobals
PHP Cookies and Sessions
- HTTP is Stateless
- Cookies
- Sessions
- Authentication