PHP 5 / MySQL Programming for the Absolute Beginner : 9781592004942

Computer programming has often been seen as a difficult and arcane
skill. Programming languages are difficult and complicated, out of the
typical person’s reach. However, the advent of the World Wide Web has
changed that to some extent. It’s reasonably easy to build and post a
Web page for the entire world to see. The language of the Web is reasonably simple,
and numerous applications are available to assist in the preparation of static
pages. At some point, every Web author begins to dream of pages that actually do
something useful. The simple HTML language that builds a page offers the tantalizing
ability to build forms, but no way to work with the information that
users type into these forms.

Often, a developer has a database or some other dynamic information they wish
to somehow attach to a Web page. Even languages such as JavaScript are not satisfying
in these cases. The CGI interface was designed as an early solution to this
problem, but CGI itself can be confusing and the languages used with CGI (especially
Perl) are very powerful, but confusing to beginners.
PHP is an amazing language. It is meant to work with Web servers, where it can
do the critical work of file management and database access. It is reasonably easy
to learn and understand, and can be embedded into Web pages. It is as powerful
as more-difficult languages, with a number of impressive extensions that add
new features to the language.

In this book, I teach you how to write computer programs. I do not expect you to
have any previous programming experience. You learn to program using the PHP
language. Although PHP itself is a very specialized language (designed to enhance
Web pages), the concepts you learn through this language can be extended to a
number of other programming environments.