This book contains proven steps and strategies on how to code in PHP to create web applications. You will learn about the distinct features of PHP in the form of functional codes that you can use in a PHP editor for practice purposes. I have made sure that you'll learn about all the basic and advanced level codes that you will need to create a web app such as a Content Management System (CMS). As MySQL is an integral part of PHP, I have dedicated a chapter on different statements of MySQL, which you can use to operate a database. PHP is hollow without MySQL because each web application requires a database to channelize user information and store it for future usage.

PHP is not too old; we can trace back its origins to 1994 when Rasmus Lerdorf wrote the very first version. It was built, in its initial phases, from the C language as a means of replacing code snippets of Perl that he had been using on the personal homepage that he had. It kept evolving; however, it was 1995 that he released the very first formal as well as the public version of this language. At this point, PHP had been referred to as Personal Homepage Tools. JavaScript was bound to release in 1996 as a client-side language. PHP's release at that time as a server-side language speaks volumes about the tremendous growth in the tools of the Internet that occurred at that time.