PHP

Also known as PHP programming language, PHP Hypertext Preprocessor

PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared towards web development. It was created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by the PHP Group. PHP was originally an abbreviation of Personal Home Page, but it now stands for the recursive backronym PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.

AI overview

PHP is a programming language designed primarily for building websites and web applications, created in 1995 and now maintained by the PHP Group. It matters because it has become one of the foundational technologies for web development, powering a significant portion of websites on the internet.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Key facts

Programming language.logo: PHP-logo.svg
Programming language.logo size: 200px
Programming language.paradigm: Multi-paradigm: imperative, functional, object-oriented, procedural, reflective
Programming language.designer: Rasmus Lerdorf
Programming language.developer: , Zend Technologies,
Programming language.typing: Dynamic, weak, gradual
Programming language.implementations: Zend Engine, HHVM, PeachPie, Quercus, Parrot
Programming language.influenced by: Perl, C, C++, Java, Tcl, JavaScript
Programming language.influenced: Hack, JSP, ASP, React JS
Programming language.programming language: C (primarily; some components in C++)
Programming language.operating system: Unix-like, Windows, macOS, IBM i, OpenVMS, IBM Z

~50 min read

Article

31 sections

Contents

History
Early history (1993 to 1997)
PHP 3 and 4 (1998 to 2004)
Early PHP 5 (2004 to 2006)
PHP 6 and Unicode
Later PHP 5 (2009 to 2014)
PHP 7.x (2015 to 2019)
PHP 8.x (2020 onwards)
Release history
Prevalence of outdated versions
Mascot
Syntax
Data types
Functions
PHP objects
Example
Implementations
Licensing
Development and community
The PHP Foundation
Installation and configuration
Use
Popularity and usage statistics
Security
Cryptographic security
Long-term support
See also
Notes
References
Further reading
External links

PHP code is usually processed on a web server by a PHP interpreter implemented as a module, a daemon or a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) executable. On a web server, the result of the interpreted and executed PHP codewhich may be any type of data, such as generated HTML or binary image datacan form the whole or part of an HTTP response. Various web template systems, web content management systems, and web frameworks exist that can be employed to orchestrate or facilitate the generation of that response. Additionally, PHP can be used for programming tasks outside the web context, though non-web uses are rare. PHP code can also be directly executed from the command line.