Meloni - Sams teach yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache : all in one

Julie C. Meloni

800 East 96th Street, Indianapolis, Indiana, 46240 USA

Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQLand Apache All in One
Copyright 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained herein. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Nor is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

ISBN-13: 978-0-672-33543-3
ISBN-10: 0-672-33543-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Meloni, Julie C.
Sams teach yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache : all in one / Julie C.
Meloni.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-672-33543-3 (pbk. w/cd)
ISBN-10: 0-672-33543-3
1. Web site development. 2. PHP (Computer program language) 3.
Apache (Computer file : Apache Group) 4. MySQL (Electronic resource)
I. Title.
TK5105.888.M45 2012
005.13--dc23
2012016353

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing May 2012

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Julie C. Meloni is a technical consultant who has been developing web-based applications since the Web first saw the light of day. She has authored numerous books and articles on web-based programming and scripting languages and database topics, and you can find translations of her work in 18 different languages. She blogs at thickbook.com and nerdtripping.comthe latter reserved for tips and tricks for traveling while nerdy.

The Apache Software Foundation, the PHP Group, and MySQL AB deserve much more recognition than they ever get for creating these super products that drive the vast majority of the Web.

Although this book is several editions removed from the original text by Daniel Lopez (author of Sams Teach Yourself Apache 2 in 24 Hours) and Matt Zandstra (author of Sams Teach Yourself PHP in 24 Hours), this book would not exist without their work oh so many years ago.

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Welcome to Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL, and Apache All in One, Fifth Edition. Im happy to report that the PHP language and its community of developers and users continues to grow every dayhence the need for a refresh of this book.

Since the previous edition of this book, the end of life of PHP 4 finally set in; with the help of a GoPHP5 initiative, web hosting providers and application developers migrated their services and code away from PHP 4specific features and coding practices and into the world of PHP 5full of speed and an even greater feature set. As with the previous edition, all the code in this edition is based on the latest version of PHP available at the time of this writing (5.4.0, in this case).

Some of you might have heard of PHP 6 or have seen books touting PHP 6 as the core language used. Well, a version of the language called PHP 6 never materializedthe functionality planned for a version 6 release was added to PHP 5.3 and PHP 5.4. So, have no fear; youre not missing anything if you hear PHP 6 and cannot find anything about it online or at the PHP.net website.

Over the course of this book, you learn the concepts necessary for configuring and managing the Apache web server, the basics of programming in PHP, and the methods for using and administering the MySQL relational database system. The overall goal of the book is to provide you with the foundation you need to understand how seamlessly these technologies integrate with one another and to give you practical knowledge of how to integrate them into functioning websites and web applications. This book should be a first stepnot your only stepto more advanced site development.

This book is geared toward individuals who possess a general understanding of the concepts of working in a web-based development environment, be it Linux/UNIX, Windows, or Mac OS X. Installation and configuration instructions assume that you have familiarity with your operating system and the basic methods of building (on Linux/UNIX systems) or installing (on Windows and Mac OS X systems) software.

The lessons that delve into programming with PHP assume no previous knowledge of the language. However, if you have experience with other programming languages, such as ASP (Active Server Pages), JSP (JavaServer Pages), Ruby, or Perl, you will find the going much easier because of your familiarity with such programming elements as variables, control structures, functions, objects, and the like. Similarly, if you have worked with other databases, such as Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server, you already possess a solid foundation for working through the MySQL-related lessons.