Paul Hudson - PHP in a Nutshell

, Introduction to PHP, covers the general characteristics of the PHP language and its implementations, and discusses where to get help and information.

, Installing PHP, explains how to obtain and install PHP.

, The PHP Interpreter, covers the PHP interpreter and its use for running PHP programs on a web server or on the command line.

, The PHP Language, covers PHP syntax, variables, control structures, includes, and user-defined functions.

, Variables and Constants, examines the different variable types in PHP.

, Operators, outlines the basic operators in PHP.

, Function Reference, is a reference chapter for the most commonly used built-in functions of PHP.

, Object-Oriented PHP, explains object-oriented programming in PHP.

, HTML Forms, is an introduction to creating HTML forms and processing them in PHP.

, Cookies and Sessions, explains the tools for using cookies and sessions in PHP.

, Output Buffering, describes how to buffer your output, and when you would want to do so.

, Security, covers a few essential security considerations when running PHP websites.

, Files, is a reference to the functions for interacting with files.

, Databases, gives a brief introduction to accessing MySQL and SQLite databases in PHP, and to PEAR::DB, which provides a consistent interface to many different database packages.

, Regular Expressions, covers some powerful ways to process strings, including matching, extracting substrings, and replacing text.

, Manipulating Images, shows how to create and alter images with the GD library that ships with PHP.

, Creating PDFs, shows how to create PDFs in PHP using PDFlib.

, Creating Flash, shows how to generate Flash movies in PHP using the Ming library.

, XML & XSLT, covers modules for processing XML with PHP.

, Network Programming, explains socket programming, custom HTTP headers, HTTP authentication, sending email, and sending data over FTP and HTTP with Curl.

, Distributing Your Code, describes a few considerations when you prepare to distribute your code to other users.

, Debugging, is about the tools available to help you track down errors in your PHP code.

, Performance, offers a few tips on getting the most out of PHP.

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