Summary

In this chapter, we started to see how our web applications will interact with users. By writing and processing the results of HTML Forms, we are able to receive data from users and process appropriately. We have also seen how we can, when it is absolutely necessary, learn about our operating environment and specifically about the web server and operating system software being used where our PHP scripts execute.

With this knowledge, we have completed our introduction to the PHP language. While we are not experts and will see more about the language in later chapters, we have a solid foundation and a clear understanding of some of the features, details, and quirks of the language we use to write useful code.

In the next few chapters, we will turn our attention to the second major component of our web applicationsdatabases. In the next chapter, we will start by defining what we mean by database, why we would use one, what choices are available in database software, and how to go about selecting one.