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Introduction To PHP A Historical Journey

PHP, an open-source server-side scripting language, has evolved significantly since its inception in 1995, powering 77.5% of websites with known server-side languages. Key milestones include the introduction of object-oriented programming in PHP 3 and enhancements in performance and security in PHP 7 and 8. Today, PHP is integral to web development, supporting various frameworks and content management systems while continuously evolving to meet modern demands.

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10 views10 pages

Introduction To PHP A Historical Journey

PHP, an open-source server-side scripting language, has evolved significantly since its inception in 1995, powering 77.5% of websites with known server-side languages. Key milestones include the introduction of object-oriented programming in PHP 3 and enhancements in performance and security in PHP 7 and 8. Today, PHP is integral to web development, supporting various frameworks and content management systems while continuously evolving to meet modern demands.

Uploaded by

chandumenswear3
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Introduction to PHP: A

Historical Journey
PHP, the Hypertext Preprocessor, is an open-source, server-side
scripting language. It's designed primarily for web development.
Powering 77.5% of all websites with a known server-side language,
PHP stands out for its simplicity, flexibility, and vast community
support. Let's delve into its fascinating history.

CG
by Chandu Gowda
Early Days: PHP 1.0 and 2.0 (1995-1997)
Rasmus Lerdorf's Vision Simple beginnings

PHP began as Rasmus Lerdorf's Personal Home Page An early counter script demonstrated PHP's dynamic
Tools, or PHP Tools. These tools evolved into PHP/FI capabilities. These steps showed PHP's potential to
(Form Interpreter), gaining database support and solve real problems and start to build complex
cookies. Early use cases included simple dynamic websites.
websites and form processing.
PHP 3: The First Major Leap (1997)
Core Rewrite
Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans rewrote the core, marking a turning point.

Recursive Acronym
It was renamed to PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.

OOP Features
Object-oriented programming features were introduced.

The modular design enabled extensibility through modules, like database extensions. With all these new tools, the world was rapidly adopting PHP
PHP 4: Performance and
Stability (2000)
Zend Engine Key Features
The Zend Engine This version included
delivered a performance session management,
boost and improved output buffering, and
resource management. enhanced security
features.

Major Adoption
Yahoo! adopted PHP, a key milestone. This helped PHP
became the dominant server-side scripting language.
PHP 5: Embracing Object-
Oriented Programming (2004)

Zend Engine II
Improved OOP capabilities were added with private and protected.

PDO
PDO (PHP Data Objects) provided consistent database access.

Improved XML
Improved XML and SOAP support facilitated web service integration.

These enhancements empowered developers to construct more complex


web applications. The transition to Object-Oriented Programming began.
PHP 5.3 - 5.6: Modernization (2009-2014)
Namespaces
1 Improved code organization.

Late Static Bindings


2 Improved inheritance.

Closures
3 Enabled functional programming.

Traits enabled code reuse. These versions showed modern languages adapting to PHP. The language has become more mod
The Dark Ages: Challenges Emerge

Security Risks
Vulnerabilities like SQL injection and
2
XSS arose.
Inconsistent Naming
Function names lacked consistency.
1

3 Performance Bottlenecks
JIT compilation was missing.

These challenges sparked community efforts to address security and improve performance. The next versions of
PHP would attempt to solve these problems.
PHP 7: A New Era of
Performance (2015)

2x Reduced
Faster performance with Zend Reduced memory consumption.
Engine 3.

Scalar
Scalar type declarations.

Return type declarations also enhanced code clarity and type safety.
All these changes showed major improvements to PHP. This made the
language worth using again.
PHP 8: The Present and
Future (2020)
JIT Compilation Further performance gains

Attributes Meta-data for classes,


methods, and functions

Union Types Declaring multiple possible


types for a variable

The match expression improved the switch statement with type


safety. All these features make PHP worth using today.
PHP's Enduring Legacy and Future
Current Role Frameworks and CMS Continuous Evolution
PHP is a key part of the web Frameworks (Laravel, Symfony) Ongoing improvements in
development ecosystem. and CMS (WordPress, Drupal) performance, security, and
rely on PHP. language features.

PHP remains a powerful tool for modern web applications. The web would not exist without PHP.

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