How This Book Is Organized

This book is organized into five parts.

Part I: PHP Foundations

The lessons in Part I introduce the basic building blocks of the PHP language:

• Lesson 1: Getting to Know PHP. This chapter introduces you to what PHP is all about and gives some simple examples to show how PHP is used inside a web page.

• Lesson 2: Variables. This chapter explains how you assign values to variables and demonstrates some simple expressions.

• Lesson 3: Flow Control. This chapter examines the conditional and looping constructs that allow you to control the flow of a PHP script.

• Lesson 4: Functions. This chapter explains how you can modularize and reuse a frequently used section of code as a function.

Part II: Working with Data

The lessons in Part II examine in more detail the different types of data that can be manipulated by PHP:

• Lesson 5: Working with Numbers. This chapter gives more detailed examples of the numeric manipulation you can perform in PHP.

• Lesson 6: Working with Strings. This chapter examines the powerful set of string functions that PHP provides.

• Lesson 7: Working with Arrays. This chapter explains how arrays work and examines the PHP functions that can manipulate this powerful data type.

• Lesson 8: Regular Expressions. This chapter shows how to perform complex string manipulation by using powerful regular expressions.

• Lesson 9: Working with Dates and Times. This chapter examines how to use date and time values in a PHP script.

• Lesson 10: Using Classes. This chapter introduces you to object-oriented PHP and examines how you define and access a class in a script.

Part III: The Web Environment

The lessons in Part III deal with using PHP specifically in the web environment:

• Lesson 11: Processing HTML Forms. This chapter shows how you use PHP to process user-submitted input from an HTML form.

• Lesson 12: Generating Dynamic HTML. This chapter examines some techniques for creating HTML components on-the-fly from PHP.

• Lesson 13: Form Validation. This chapter examines some techniques for validating user-submitted input from an HTML form.

• Lesson 14: Cookies and Sessions. This chapter shows how to pass data between pages by using PHP sessions and how to send cookies to a user's browser.

• Lesson 15: User Authentication. This chapter examines some techniques for validating user-submitted input from an HTML form.

• Lesson 16: Communicating with the Web Server. This chapter looks at ways in which PHP can interact with a web server.

Part IV: Using Other Services from PHP

Part IV looks at how PHP can communicate with external programs and services:

• Lesson 17: Filesystem Access. This chapter examines the PHP functions that enable you to access the filesystem.

• Lesson 18: Host Program Execution. This chapter examines the PHP functions that enable you to execute programs on the host system.

• Lesson 19: Using a MySQL Database. This chapter shows how to use a MySQL database for data storage and retrieval from PHP.

• Lesson 20: Database Abstraction. This chapter explains how you can access a database through an abstraction layer to make scripts more portable.

• Lesson 21: Running PHP on the Command Line. This chapter shows how you can use PHP as a powerful shell scripting language.

• Lesson 22: Error Handling and Debugging. This chapter discusses some techniques for finding and fixing bugs in scripts.

Part V: Configuring and Extending PHP

The final part of the book deals with PHP administration:

• Lesson 23: PHP Configuration. This chapter explains some of the popular configuration options that can be set at runtime to change the behavior of PHP.

• Lesson 24: PHP Security. This chapter discusses security issues in PHP scripts and shows how you can use Safe Mode on a shared web server.

• Lesson 25: Using PEAR. This chapter introduces the freely available classes that are available in the PHP Extension and Application Repository.