Exploring PHP

I finished working through the simple PHP tutorial today. It was pretty helpful. Here are my notes:

Hint: "It's not working!?! Why?!?"

• Check: Is Apache turned on? duh...

php tag:

• <?php to start a php tag
• ?> to end the tag
• Use the tag within an html file to jump in and out of php.
• Can jump in and out of php/html within a php block even.

Variable info:

• Variables always start with a '$'.
• Can see all reserved variables through phpinfo().
• Variables can be pretty much the same types (bool, int, string, etc.) that they could be in C++, but you don't need to declare them that way. Also some mixed types and type casting is allowed.

Helpful functions:

• strpos($haystack, 'needle'); //finds the string needle within the variable haystack. Returns the position, or FALSE.
• int count (mixed $var [, int $mode] ); //Returns the number of elements in var, which is typically an array, since anything else will have one element.
• PHP can access html form info easily. See tutorial for help.

Things to explore:

• It seems like you can use php alone as well, without html surrounding it. Is that true?
  • For instance, <?php phpinfo(); ?> works fine in its own file.
• What is "Model View Controller"? It sounds like a way of organizing your code to make it more readable and understandable.
• The PHP manual is pretty helpful and has a lot of examples and documentation for functions, global variables, etc. I'm impressed with how easy it is to understand.