Sams Teach Yourself PHP and MySQL: Video Learning Starter Kit (Sams Teach Yourself Series)

Before You Begin

This Sams Teach Yourself Video Learning Kit is about the two web development technologies that are at the foundation of many of the world’s best, most popular websites and applications.

PHP and MySQL are at work behind the scenes in everything from the most simple WordPress blog to huge sites like Facebook, Wikipedia, Digg, and Yahoo, with millions of subscribers and users worldwide.

While the videos in this course most likely won’t show you how to develop the next Facebook or WordPress, they will give even non-programmers a solid understanding of how PHP and MySQL work and how you too can easily learn the basics of using PHP and MySQL, and begin to add interactivity and dynamic content to your own website, large or small.

Before you get started watching the videos, however, we suggest that you first take a few minutes to review the material in this booklet. The information here will help you make sure you have all the equipment that’s needed to watch the videos and do the exercises, and it will help you make best use of all the unique features of these courses as well as the software that’s also on the DVD.

About PHP and MySQL

Both PHP and MySQL are open-source technologies. This means that they’re developed not by a single company that charges a fee for the use of their software, but by a community of developers from around the world who donate their time to the project. In return, anyone can use the software for free as long as they don’t try to claim ownership of the software and as long as they “give back” to the project any enhancements they may make to the product.

PHP is what’s known as a scripting language, a form of a programming language that does not need to be compiled and therefore PHP programs—or code—generally can be read relatively easily by someone who understands the language’s basic rules and terms.

PHP is most often used in web development, helping to make web pages more interactive and dynamic, displaying different pieces of information or data each time the script is run.

The PHP code is typically embedded within an HTML page. When a particular HTML-based web page is opened in a browers, the PHP script tells the web server to perform some specific task—for example, calculate and then display the current date and time, or pull up and display a customer’s account information.

MySQL (pronounced My-Ess-Que-Ell) is a very fast, robust, relational database management system (RDBMS) that enables you to efficiently store, search, sort, and retrieve data.

MySQL is also used most often in web development, and typically is found working alongside PHP, responding to requests for specific pieces of data from the PHP script (or storing away data too).

Both PHP and MySQL are relatively easy for beginning web developers to learn at a fundamental level. Anyone who’s already familiar with HTML, and generally with how websites and servers work, should be able to understand and create basic PHP code after only a few lessons.

About The Video Lessons

Sams Teach Yourself Video Learning courses are designed not only for beginners, but also for busy, time-crunched people who aren’t able to devote the large blocks of time often required to take a full class on a subject, or to read some thick tome that covers everything in more detail than you’ll ever need.

Each lesson in this course takes no more that 10 minutes to 1) watch the video tutorial, 2) try the hands-on examples in the lab section, and 3) take a short quiz to test yourself before moving on.

The short video tutorials clearly explain key concepts, terms, and techniques, and are rich in diagrams and clear, real-world examples. Plus, you can stop, start, pause, or replay any part of the video you want, as often as you want, until you feel you really understand it.

After you’ve watched the video tutorial, you then get to try it yourself and put what you’ve learned to work in a unique hands-on learning lab that helps you begin to develop real live programs that you can use on your own website.

The software that you need to complete the exercises is included on the DVD. And as you continue to watch the lesson on your computer, you’re guided step-by-step through the process of creating your own usable code.

Once you’re done trying things out in the learning lab each lesson ends with a short, easy quiz so you can test what you’ve learned before you go on to the next lesson.

Who This Video Learning Kit is For

This course is aimed at beginning web developers or designers who want to learn PHP, even if they don’t have any previous programming or scripting experience.

It can also be used by someone who does have some previous programming experience but have not written for the Web before. This course would provide an understanding of the specifics of PHP, and how to apply general programming techniques to the Web environment.

This course does not teach HTML. And although a thorough knowledge of HTML is not necessarily a prerequisite, the course does assumes a basic understanding of how web pages are constructed, where they’re stored and maintained, and how a user interacts with them through a web browser.

What’s on the DVD

The DVD for Sams Teach Yourself PHP and MySQL Video Learning has several components—all accessible by either a Windows or a Mac computer:

• 25 ten-minute video lessons—each made up of a short video tutorial, a hands-on learning lab for trying things out, and a short self-assessment quiz at the end.
• Software for the learning labs—PHP, MySQL, the Apache web server, a script editing program, and code that you can cut-and-paste or customize in your own scripts.
• The complete text of the lessons in PDF—All the video lessons in this course are based on chapters from the print book Sams Teach Yourself PHP in 10 Minutes. So to help you out if you want to re-read a particular lesson or quickly look up a term or technique, we’ve included the full text of the book in easily searchable PDF format.

How The Course Is Organized

Sams Teach Yourself PHP and MySQL Video Learning is organized into five parts, with each part made up of at least six video lessons designed to be completed in 10 minutes or less.

Part I: PHP Foundations

The lessons in Part I introduce the basic building blocks of the PHP language:

• Lesson 1: Getting to Know PHP. Introduces you to what PHP is all about and gives some simple examples to show how PHP is used inside a web page.
• Lesson 2: Variables. Explains how you assign values to variables and demonstrates some simple expressions.
• Lesson 3: Flow Control. Examines the conditional and looping constructs that allow you to control the flow of a PHP script.
• Lesson 4: Functions. Explains how you can modularize and reuse a frequently used section of code as a function.
• Lesson 5: Working with Numbers. Gives more detailed examples of numeric manipulations you can perform in PHP.
• Lesson 6: Working with Strings. Examines the powerful set of functions that PHP provides to work with strings of text characters.

Part II: Using PHP to Work with Data

The lessons in Part II examine in more detail the different types of data that can be manipulated by PHP:

• Lesson 7: Working with Arrays. Explains how arrays work and examines the PHP functions that can manipulate this powerful data type.
• Lesson 8: Regular Expressions. Shows how to perform complex string manipulation by using regular expressions.
• Lesson 9: Working with Dates and Times. Examines how to use date and time values in a PHP script.
• Lesson 10: Using Classes. Introduces you to object-oriented PHP and examines how you define and access a class in a script.
• Lesson 11: Processing HTML Forms. Shows how you use PHP to process user-submitted input from an HTML form.
• Lesson 12: Generating Dynamic HTML. Examines some techniques for creating HTML components on-the-fly from PHP.

Part III: PHP and the Web Environment

The lessons in Part III deal with using PHP specifically in the web environment:

• Lesson 13: Form Validation. Examines some techniques for validating user-submitted input from an HTML form.
• Lesson 14: Cookies and Sessions. Shows how to pass data between pages by using PHP sessions and how to send cookies to a user’s browser.
• Lesson 15: User Authentication. Examines some techniques for validating user-submitted input from an HTML form.
• Lesson 16: Communicating with the Web Server. Looks at ways in which PHP can interact with a web server.
• Lesson 17: Filesystem Access. Examines the PHP functions that enable you to access a server’s filesystem.
• Lesson 18: Host Program Execution. Examines the PHP functions that enable you to execute programs on the host system.

Part IV: Using MySQL with PHP

Part IV looks at how PHP can communicate with databases such as MySQL, and also covers basic PHP administration and security techniques.

• Lesson 19: Using a MySQL Database. Shows how to use a MySQL database for data storage and retrieval from PHP.
• Lesson 20: Database Abstraction. Explains how you can access a database through an abstraction layer to make scripts more portable.
• Lesson 21: Running PHP on the Command Line. Shows how you can use PHP as a powerful shell scripting language.
• Lesson 22: Error Handling and Debugging. Discusses some techniques for finding and fixing bugs in scripts.
• Lesson 23: PHP Configuration. Explains some of the popular configuration options that can be set at runtime to change the behavior of PHP.
• Lesson 24: PHP Security. Discusses security issues in PHP scripts and shows how you can use Safe Mode on a shared web server.
• Lesson 25: Using PEAR. Introduces the freely available classes that are available in the PHP Extension and Application Repository.

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