PHP Crash Course

Start off your web development journey the right way with this beginner-friendly introduction to PHP programming.

PHP Crash Course takes you from beginner to professional PHP programming, through hundreds of in-depth examples and hands-on exercises. You’ll explore best practices for developing fast, secure, and easy-to-maintain websites, while establishing a broad foundation of programming knowledge and experience. You’ll also learn how to create consistent, modern-looking web pages with easily customizable templates by combining dynamic PHP scripts, static HTML code, and Bootstrap styling; how to write scripts that can communicate with MySQL to enable data-rich web apps; and how to implement best-practice website security. As you follow along, you’ll learn real-life patterns and modern programming techniques for creating, extending, and modifying web applications, all using the powerful PHP language.

Dr. Matt Smith is a senior lecturer in computing at Technology University (TU) Dublin, specializing in interactive multimedia and server-side web development. He has been teaching for over 30 years. Smith researches the use of applied computer game technology, especially to support teaching and learning, and is one of the authors of the Unity 2021 Cookbook.

Part 1: Fundamentals
Chapter 1: Introduction to PHP
Chapter 2: PHP Program Basics
Chapter 3: Numbers, Booleans, and NULL
Chapter 4: Working with Text Strings
Chapter 5: Making Choices
Chapter 6: Reusing Code with Functions
Part 2: Loops and Arrays
Chapter 7: Loops
Chapter 8: Simple Arrays
Chapter 9: Maps
Part 3: Websites and Form Processing
Chapter 10: Client–Server Communication
Chapter 11: PHP Websites and the Built-In PHP Server
Chapter 12: HTML Forms to Send Data
Chapter 13: Processing Form Data
Chapter 14: Validating Form Data
Chapter 15: Separating Logic and Output and Adding a Front Controller
Part 4: Sessions
Chapter 16: Working with Browser Sessions
Chapter 17: Shopping Carts
Chapter 18: Sessions for Login Authentication
Part 5: Object-Oriented PHP
Chapter 19: The Basics of Object-Oriented Programming
Chapter 20: Classes and Objects
Chapter 21: Inheritance
Chapter 22: Composer, Namespaces, and Autoloading
Chapter 23: Twig Templating
Chapter 24: Object-Oriented Web Architecture
Chapter 25: Exceptions
Chapter 26: Logging
Chapter 27: Static Members
Chapter 28: Interfaces and Traits
Chapter 29: Advanced Object-Oriented Concepts
Part 6: Databases
Chapter 30: Working with Databases
Chapter 31: Databases and Objects
Chapter 32: Improving Website Security
Chapter 33: Dates and Times