CS 6
ADVANCED WEB
PROGRAMMING
Unit 3:
Syntax Overview
Escaping to PHP
The PHP parsing engine needs a
way to differentiate PHP code from other
elements in the page.
• Canonical PHP tags
• Short-open (SGML-style) tags
• HTML script tags
• ASP-style tags
Canonical PHP tags
The most universally effective PHP
tag style is:
<?php
echo “PHP Code goes here...”
?>
Short-open (SGML-style) tags
Short or short-open tags look like this:
<? PHP Code goes here... ?>
Two things to enable PHP to recognize the
tags:
• Choose the --enable-short-tags
configuration option when you're building
PHP.
• Set the short_open_tag setting in your
php.ini file to on. This option must be
disabled to parse XML with PHP because the
same syntax is used for XML tags.
ASP-style tags
ASP-style tags mimic the tags used
by Active Server Pages to delineate
code blocks. ASP-style tags look like this:
<% PHP Code goes here... %>
HTML script tags
HTML script tags look like this:
<script language = “php"> PHP Code goes
here... </script>
Commenting PHP Code
A comment is the portion of a
program that exists only for the human
reader and stripped out before displaying
the programs result. There are two
commenting formats in PHP:
Single-line comments - They are
generally used for short explanations or
notes relevant to the local code.
Here are the examples of single line
comments.
<?
# This is a comment, and
# This is the second line of the comment
// This is a comment too. Each style comments
only
print "An example with single line comments";
?>
Multi-lines printing − Here are the examples to
print multiple lines in a single print statement:
<?
# First Example
print <<<END
This uses the "here document" syntax to output
multiple lines with $variable interpolation. Note
that the here document terminator must appear on a
line with just a semicolon no extra whitespace!
END;
# Second Example
print "This spans
multiple lines. The newlines will be
output as well";
?>
Multi-lines comments − They are generally used
to provide pseudocode algorithms and more detailed
explanations when necessary.
<?
/* This is a comment with multiline
Author : Your Name
Purpose: Multiline Comments Demo
Subject: PHP
*/
print "An example with multi line comments";
?>
PHP is whitespace insensitive
Whitespace is the stuff you type that
is typically invisible on the screen,
including spaces, tabs, and carriage
returns (end-of-line characters).
For example, each of the following PHP
statements that assigns the sum of 2 + 2 to the
variable $four is equivalent:
$four = 2 + 2; // single spaces
$four <tab>=<tab2<tab>+<tab>2 ; // spaces and tabs
$four =
2+
2; // multiple lines
PHP is case sensitive
PHP is a case sensitive language. Try out following
example:
<html>
<body>
<?php
$capital = 67;
print("Variable capital is $capital<br>");
print("Variable CaPiTaL is $CaPiTaL<br>");
?>
</body>
</html>
Output/ results:
Variable capital is 67
Variable CaPiTaL is
Statements are expressions
terminated by semicolons
A statement in PHP is any
expression that is followed by a semicolon
(;).Any sequence of valid PHP statements
that is enclosed by the PHP tags is a valid
PHP program.
A typical statement in PHP, which in
this case assigns a string of characters to
a variable called $greeting:
$greeting = "Welcome to PHP!";
Braces make blocks
Although statements cannot be
combined like expressions, you can
always put a sequence of statements
anywhere a statement can go by
enclosing them in a set of curly braces.
Here both statements are equivalent:
if (3 == 2 + 1)
print("Good - I haven't totally lost my
mind.<br>");
if (3 == 2 + 1) {
print("Good - I haven't totally");
print("lost my mind.<br>");
}
Output:
Good - I haven't totally lost my mind.
Good - I haven't totallylost my mind.
Open your VSCode
Click New File…
then type home.php >
press Enter
Go to the xampp folder, then open the
php folder and copy the path of the PHP
folder
Double click the path folder of the php and
copy the path of the PHP folder
Go to settings > click Advanced system
settings > choose Environment Variables…
Choose
Path in System
Variables > click
Edit > click New,
then paste the
path folder of the
php and click OK
Self-Assessment
