Beginning PHP

nikko50

Hi there. I'm trying to run PHP on my Windows PC. I loaded this PHP Triad program which contains Apache, My Sql, and PHP. Now how do I go aboput writing code so the PHP can read the page I write. I used Frontpage to write the " Hello World" code and saved the file as a .php file but IE will not read it. Obviously I'm doing somethings wrong. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
Sharon🙂)

pablodelapena

PHP is server side ie, it has to be parsed by the PHP program first which then sends the parsed PHP code to the browser as raw HTML.

eg:

<html>
<body>
<?php
echo "Hello world!";
?>
</body>
</html>

Here the "<?php" and "?>" tags tell the PHP engine to start parsing the php. It will read through the script and excecute any funtions etc it encounters. In this case it finds the echo() function and exceutes it. It send the output as HTML to the browser.

The browser doesnt understand the difference between PHP and HTML so just parses it all as HTML This is why you need the PHP program.

Soo..... to run the PHP you need to access it through a URL. On my local machine I assess my php pages via http://127.0.0.1/page.php

Hope that helps!

nikko50

Thanks for the response. When In downloaded the PHPTriad program it came with a PHP parser. When you mean access with ,local machine, what do you mean?? I'm very new.
Sharon🙂)

pablodelapena

In most cases (Im generalising) Someone code their pages on their own computer. Then they upload it to a server to be accessed through a URL. e.g www.my-site.com/page.html

When coding your HTML pages you most likely wrote it via your editor and tested it by double clickign the file and viewing it through yor browser.

Your 'local machine' is your computer. the 'remote machine' is the server.

However if you want to test your PHP on your local machine you need to ahve Apache/PHP running. In order for the PHP program to know that it needs to parse a file it needs to be accessed through a browser.

If you merely double click the browser just attempts tor ead from the file. It can't understand PHP so just outputs it as if it were HTML.

But if you have the PHP in your root folder and type ina URL the browser attempts to download the file. Your local PHP server resides on that URL (my example was http://127.0.0.1) and when the browser request it it will recall the file. The PHP finds its file extension is .php and so will parse it and then send it to the browser as HTML.

I HOPE that explains it. I'm quite bad at explaining what I mean.

nikko50

Thanks so much. It now works!! You are the best.
Sharon🙂))