PHP Crash Course

Start off your web development journey the right way with this beginner-friendly introduction to PHP programming.

This book will take you from beginner-level to professional PHP programming, through hundreds of in-depth examples and hands-on exercises. You’ll explore best practices for developing fast, secure, and easy-to-maintain websites, while establishing a broad foundation of programming knowledge and experience.

You’ll learn how to:

• Create consistent, modern-looking web pages with easily customizable templates by combining dynamic PHP scripts, static HTML code, and Bootstrap styling
  
• Write server-side scripts for responding to HTTP requests, processing forms, and validating data
  
• Use browser sessions to implement shopping carts and user logins, and to store other user data
  
• Write scripts that can communicate with MySQL and other PDO databases, enabling database-driven, data-rich web applications
  
• Implement modern, best-practice website security, including user data sanitization, session-based logins using hashed passwords, and database prepared statements
  
• Save time with up-to-date, professional, open-source tools, including Composer dependency management and the Twig templating library
  

As you follow along, you’ll learn real-life patterns and modern programming techniques for creating, extending, and modifying web applications, all using the powerful PHP language.

Dr. Matt Smith is a senior lecturer in computing at Technology University (TU) Dublin, specializing in interactive multimedia and server-side web development. He has been teaching for over 30 years. Smith researches the use of applied computer game technology, especially to support teaching and learning, and is one of the authors of the Unity 2021 Cookbook.