What is PHP used for in web development
In this article, we will discuss what is PHP used for in web development. First of all, I would like to discuss what is PHP.
What is PHP
PHP is one of the most popular, open-source, server-side scripting languages for developing web applications.
Most popular
According to the “survey report” from Wetechs.com
Around 10million+ webs sites use at least some or other PHP scripts to generate their pages. Observe the given Statistics on the language used by websites:
PHP- 82.6%
ASP.NET – 15.1%
JAVA(jsp) – 2.6%
15.1% of the websites use java, 2.6% of the websites use ASP.NET and 82.6% of the websites use PHP. So, PHP is the first and most used server-side scripting language. JSP stands for Java Server Pages, ASP stands for Active Server Pages and PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor. JSP is from Java technology, ASP is from Microsoft, and PHP is from Zen technologies.
Many of the world’s largest and fastest-growing organizations like Facebook, Wikipedia, flicker, google, yahoo!, Tumbler, WordPress, source forge.net, etc.
Open source
PHP was developed using C and C++. Software whose original source code is freely available to use, read, modify and extend.
Programming language vs scripting language
In the computer world, we find a wide variety of languages like programming languages, scripting languages, query languages, markup languages, style sheet languages, etc. Here we are going to understand the difference between programming and scripting languages. Actually, scripting languages are programming languages but there is a slight difference between them.
| Programming Language | Scripting Language |
|---|---|
| Programming languages are meant to develop software like word, excel, photoshop, flash, OS, Engines, Browsers, etc. | Scripting languages are meant to add functionalities or extend the capabilities of already-built software. |
| Ex: C, C++, C#, Java, etc. | Ex: Javascript, PHP, Action, Script, VB Script, etc. |
We use Javascript and PHP are used to extend capabilities for browsers. Action and Script are used to extend the capabilities of Adobe, flash, etc. VB script is one of the most popular scripting languages which is used in the web world as well as used in the Microsoft products like word, excel to extend their capabilities.
Types of scripting languages
There are two types of Scripting language
- Client-side scripts are executed on client or user machine. Ex: Javascript
- Server side scripts are executed on serve ro remote machine. Ex: PHP
There is a difference between client and server-side languages.
