Learning PHP

[sm1]

Hi all,

I've got an interest and want to learn PHP... where's a good place to start?! Need to start rather basic and want to develop it

Cheers

 

[scrizzle]

<?PHP

echo "hellooo";

?>

Start here.
http://www.w3schools.com/PHP/DEfaULT.asP

 

[sm1]

Hi,

Cheers

 

[dan_moore]

Buy a beginning PHP book (yes, an actual book!) Either use this as well as online learning or even instead of - personally I find it easier to learn something significant from a book rather than web tutorials even though there are some very good ones out there, and at the very least a good book will serve as excellent reference material.

Cheers

Dan

 

[Lewcy]

Have a look at the video tutorials from lynda dot com they are a great way to start.

 

[Interconnect IT]

I'll back up Dan's view that getting hold of a good book can be very valuable - the big advantage is that you can sit and read it on the bus, train or in the bath. The absorption effect of rooting around the book can help you learn in particular about the capabilities of the language.

But the best way to learn, I've found, is task oriented learning for which a teacher or helpful colleague along with some example code can be wonderful. I've learned most of my coding this way and have something daft like twelve languages from my past.

FWIW, if this is your first foray into coding, PHP is probably the worst place to start. It's not an inherently 'safe' language when working with websites and your early code will present a security risk to anything you're working on.

So ask yourself... why do you want to learn the language. If it's to work on php based systems then fair enough. If it's to develop cool web stuff then Ruby, quickly followed by Ruby on Rails, will probably get you there sooner and with less of a risk of creating soon-to-be-hacked website Only downside is that it's a pain to find good hosting for RoR - but it's getting easier.

 

[DBMark]

Yes there are various on-line tutorials available (for example try www DOT tizag DOT com ) but as stated above you will be better getting a good book. Often you will end up buying more than 1 - you get a beginners book to get started and then a more advanced one that shows you how to accomplish your goals. I got the Dummies book (Apache, Mysql and Php) as it's got useful stuff on Perl, Tcl, Regular Expressions as well. I also got Practical Php and Mysql by Jono Bacon which was excellent for demonstrating tricks and techniques (unfortunately the book has a few typos so be carfeful) But a good way to see what book is best for is to check out Amazon reviews on books.
When your skills improve you may then start frequenting user forums such as phpfreaks dot com. Here you can check on security techniques etc (although there are good books on this; Oreilly tend to be good in this area)

 

[brownie]

www.tizag.com also got me started, a good resource and not too heavy, once you want to do something more complex the code repository at http://www.phpclasses.org/ is handy.

 

[websnail]

Another vote for books here... Websites are all well and good for the actual coding examples where you can copy/paste and try but books are a lot less tiring on the eyes and you'll find you focus better on a written page.

In terms of tools, I'd recommend Eclipse as well as UltraEdit...

 

[gnaldrett]

I too recommend a few books to get going (the reviews in amazon can be helpful when choosing), and to be honest for reference material your best bet is the PHP site itself! A useful trick if you want to find out more about a function or feature is to type in the PHP website URL then /function (e.g. www.php.net/isset where 'isset' is what you want to find out about). This takes you straight to the latest online documentation.

I also got Practical Php and Mysql by Jono Bacon which was excellent for demonstrating tricks and techniques (unfortunately the book has a few typos so be carfeful)

I'll second that! But I will say that in programming books a few typos can actually help! With this book it forced me to find the errors myself and work out the correct code - a valuable learning curve, giving me a better understanding rather than just copying code verbatim.

Good luck,

Regards...

Gordon

 

[sm1]

Cheers all that's great stuff!!

Tried the online demo of Ruby, so simple!

I shall look through all of the resources. I have a general interest but also a bit of an interest related to our oscommerce store...

Thank you

 

[directmarketingadvice]

Buy a beginning PHP book (yes, an actual book!) Either use this as well as online learning or even instead of - personally I find it easier to learn something significant from a book rather than web tutorials even though there are some very good ones out there, and at the very least a good book will serve as excellent reference material.

Cheers

Dan

I agree with Dan (and others): get a book.

If you've a decent library system in your area, you should be able to borrow a book that will teach you the basics.

At the moment, I'm coding some Php and I borrowed "Teach Yourself Php in 24 Hours" from my library as it's got the stuff I need to know about arrays and strings.

Hope this helps,

Steve

 

[Dwebs-Ltd]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/PHP-Easy-St...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211195749&sr=1-1

The easy steps books are great the CSS book is excellent, handy as a reference.

I can't write php off the top of my head as i don't do enough of it but i can read, understand and troubleshoot without any major problems for writing complex code i have to do a bit of looking up.

Now on the other hand classic ASP i can speak or type without any references same for SQL

 

[sm1]

Cheers guys great stuff

 

[freelancer]

Hi Stefan,

I've got every book going on PHP, and my favourite for newbies has to be the for dummies series, check them out, they are pretty cheap of fleabay.

Infact, if you shoot me an email (you have my addy) I'll give you some tips, reccomend some books e.t.c and sites I have taught myself PHP from books over the last few years

 

[sm1]

Thanks Ben

 

[SimonCh]

Firstly, all the best with learning PHP! It's a fabulous tool that can produce some great results.

Now, a few things to bear in mind...

Firstly, be aware that PHP is a moving target. version 5 is current, but relatively recent. v4 is still commonly used. And you might even still find some tutorials for PHP3.

Be very careful that the techniques you learn are applicable to current versions of PHP. The language has changed quite a bit between versions (for the better, I should add), and some techniques that were standard practise in PHP3 and 4 are obsolete or discouraged in PHP5.

Secondly, take time to learn about web site security. PHP is a great tool, but like any other programming language, it is possible to use it to write really bad code. Sometimes that's okay, but on the web, you need to keep your site secure. Simple programs shouldn't have many problems, but as you learn to write more complex programs, watch out that you don't open yourself up to being hacked.

And finally, as someone else has already said, the very best resource for learning PHP is the PHP site itself. It's got one of the best online manuals I know of.

 

[sm1]

Cheers Simon... great info - Thanks