NewSourceMedia Blog » php scripts http://newsourcemedia.com/blog Focused on Interactive Design, Development and Marketing Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:56:31 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 PHP Lesson 2 – Add Comments http://newsourcemedia.com/blog/php-lesson-2-add-comments/ http://newsourcemedia.com/blog/php-lesson-2-add-comments/#comments Mon, 02 May 2005 00:22:11 +0000 admin http://newsourcemedia.com/blog/2005/05/01/php-lesson-2-add-comments/ You will save a lot of time and money if you just remember to write comments as you write your codes. Trust me, you will forget which code goes where and what it does. We all forget. This is a how-to on how to organize your scripts with different types of

Introduction

In this tutorial you will learn how to organize your PHP script using comments. You may feel it’s unnecessary to write comments in your code; however, comments can save you a great deal of time and money plus help you and other programmers understand your code for future revisions.

If you have not read part one, please do and if you are not working on a php server, we recommend SimpleHost.com for only $7.50 with Unlimited Disk Space, Subdomains, and Emails Accounts.


PHP Comment Examples

For a single line comment use “two forward slashes” (//) or a “hash sign” (#) like this:

// This is a single line comment.

# This is also a single line comment.

Multiple line comments start with a forward slash with an asterisk (/*) and ends with an asterisk with a forward slash (*/) like this:

/*
This is a multiple line comment.
Just remember that the asterisks are always placed on the inside of the combinations.
*/
Combining PHP with HTML Comment Tags

PHP comments, as well as PHP codes are not viewable in the browser window, nor will you find them inside the browser’s view HTML source code. In order to view comments in the browser’s view HTML source code, you must create comments using HTML comment tags.

An HTML Comment tag starts with a less-than sign, exclamation sign and a few dashes (<!–) and end with a few dashes with a greater-than sign (–>). Here are examples of combining PHP with HTML comments:

<?
echo “My name”;
?>
<!– this is an html comment –>
<?
echo “is Alex!”
?>

Note:
In the code above I used three blocks of code. The beginning and last blocks were PHP and the middle block was an HTML Comment.

You can also have PHP output the HTML comment like this:

<?
echo “My name <!– this is a html comment –> is Alex!”;
?>

PHP will output this to the browser:

My name is Alex!

The source html code view will look like this:

My name <!– this is an html comment –> is Alex!
Summary


If you have any questions, please search or post a question to the forum. You may also want to check out a few of the books listed below.

Books:
Professional PHP4 Programming
PHP and MySQL Web Development

]]> http://newsourcemedia.com/blog/php-lesson-2-add-comments/feed/ 0 PHP Lesson 1 – First PHP Script http://newsourcemedia.com/blog/php-lesson-1-first-php-script/ http://newsourcemedia.com/blog/php-lesson-1-first-php-script/#comments Mon, 02 May 2005 00:22:11 +0000 admin http://newsourcemedia.com/blog/2005/05/01/php-lesson-1-first-php-script/ If you are new to PHP, this is for you. Here you will learn how to create and run a PHP web page for the first time.

Introduction

In this tutorial you will learn how to run a PHP script.

Open a text editor application. Be sure to use a simple text editor, nothing like MS Word because a big text programs will add extra characters and bugs to your code.
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In order to run PHP, you are going to need a web server with PHP installed. We recommend iPowerWeb.com for only $7.50 with Unlimited Disk Space, Subdomains, and Emails Accounts. Another requirement for running PHP scripts on a server is the extension file name format. By default you must use a “.php” extension on your PHP web page files. Other extensions that may work depending on you server are “.php3″ and “.php4″.

O. K. Let’s start on our first script. To begin a block of PHP statements we need to start it with a PHP open tag:

<?php

or

<?

And now we end our code with a closer tag:

?>

Lets create a new file and name it “first.php”. Type the code below (or copy and past it) in to the file named “first.php” and upload it to your server:

<?php
print “Hello World!”;
?>

Now access the url page through the browser to see the out put. It should read:

Hello World!

Note that if you view the source html code from the browser application, all php code is hidden. It was all parsed (processed) before the browser application could view the page.
Structure

You can structure the PHP code all on one line if you prefer like this:

<?php print “Hello World!”; ?>

You can also use the short start tag ” <?” with out the “<?php” like this:

<? print “Hello World!; ?>

You can also change the “print” function to “echo” or “return” functions and achieve the same results like this:

<? echo “Hello World!”; ?>
or
<? return “Hello World!”; ?>

You can also combine HTML and PHP all in one page like this:

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>newsourcemedia.com</title>
<META http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=iso-8859-1″>
</head>
<BODY>
<? return “Hello World!”; ?>
</body>
</html>

You can also use more then on line for the string of data like this:

<?
print “Hello
World!”;
?>

or

<?
print ”
Hello
World
“;
?>

Tryout some of these above samples. You can also change the statement inside the quotes if you like to see if all still goes well.
Understanding the Code

Let take a look at how the code works. We already know from above that “<?” and “?>” are the start and end PHP tags. Next we used three deferent word: “print”, “echo” and “return”. These word commands are built-in PHP Functions that outputs data (you’ll learn soon how to build your own functions).

A Function is a command that performs an action and is modified by other data usually supplied to it. The data ( a collections of characters or a “string”) is usually always placed inside single or double quotes. Most functions must have parentheses after their name like function( ). However the three functions we have use above are exempted from that role.

Lastly, we used a semicolon “;”. The semicolon tell PHP that this is the end of the line of code and to execute this line of code.

Most programmers forget to end there code with the semicolon. You will find that most of the reasons for your codes not working properly is that you forgot as well.
Summary

In this tutorial you learned how to use a text editor to create a PHP script, how to name your PHP files, how to start and end blocks of code with start and end tags, how to output data to the browser with functions, and how to combine PHP and HTML codes.

This is just the tip of the iceberg so be sure to click here to check out our other tutorials on PHP.

If you like our script, please rate it!
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