So you want to become a PHP developer. And not just any ole' programmer, but someone who writes great code and can work on exciting projects. Well then, this series from our partners at KnpUniversity is for you! You'll learn how to develop with PHP from the very beginning, with a real project, and coding exercises throughout the lessons so you can practice immediately.
In this series, we'll learn PHP from scratch by building a real website. This means you'll learn the practices used by developers to build really cool things, and not just a bunch of theory. We're going to build a site that we're calling AirPupnMeow.com. Imagine a site like Airbnb.com, except where people rent cute pets instead of apartments. If you're looking for companionship without all that responsibility of walking your dog every morning and bringing a bag to pick up his... uh gifts, then this site would be for you! Ok, the idea might be kinda silly, but that hasn't stopped startups in the past!
In this first lesson we are going to dive right in and create our first PHP file, play around with variables, and also look at what happens when we make an error, and how to read the error message we get. If you want to follow along with the steps here, you will need access to a web sever where you can write PHP files. You can get set up quickly with a number of local development servers. We have lessons that cover material for different operating systems in our Development Environments topic page.
Throughout this first series of PHP for Beginners, you are going to learn to:
- Use functions, and variables
- Work with arrays, loops, and if statements
- Read and update files
- Handle JSON
- Set up your computer to run PHP
- Create your own functions
- Organize your project into multiple files
- Create a simple layout