PHP remains one of the most widely used server-side scripting languages powering millions of websites — including platforms like WordPress, Facebook (early days), and Wikipedia. Its simplicity, open-source nature, and massive ecosystem of frameworks and tools make it a great choice for beginners and professionals. In this article, we explore PHP’s role in modern web development, how it integrates with HTML and databases, and why it continues to thrive in 2025.
What is PHP? : PHP is a web language based on scripts that allow developers to dynamically create generated web pages.
What do the initials of PHP stand for? : PHP means PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.
Which programming language does PHP resemble? : PHP syntax resembles Perl and C
What does PEAR stand for? : PEAR means “PHP Extension and Application Repository”. It extends PHP and provides a higher level of programming for web developers.
Is multiple inheritance supported in PHP? : PHP supports only single inheritance; it means that a class can be extended from only one single class using the keyword ‘extended’.
What is the meaning of a final class and a final method? : ‘final’ is introduced in PHP5. Final class means that this class cannot be extended and a final method cannot be overridden.
How is the comparison of objects done in PHP? : We use the operator ‘==’ to test is two objects are instanced from the same class and have same attributes and equal values. We can test if two objects are referring to the same instance of the same class by the use of the identity operator ‘===’.
What type of operation is needed when passing values through a form or an URL? : If we would like to pass values through a form or an URL, then we need to encode and to decode them using htmlspecialchars() and urlencode().
How can PHP and Javascript interact? : PHP and Javascript cannot directly interact since PHP is a server side language and Javascript is a client-side language. However, we can exchange variables since PHP can generate Javascript code to be executed by the browser and it is possible to pass specific variables back to PHP via the URL.
What is needed to be able to use image function? : GD library is needed to execute image functions.
How failures in execution are handled with include() and require() functions? : If the function require() cannot access the file then it ends with a fatal error. However, the include() function gives a warning, and the PHP script continues to execute.
What is the main difference between require() and require_once()? : require(), and require_once() perform the same task except that the second function checks if the PHP script is already included or not before executing it. (same for include_once() and include())
How can we display information of a variable and readable by a human with PHP? : To be able to display a human-readable result we use print_r().
How is it possible to set an infinite execution time for PHP script? : The set_time_limit(0) added at the beginning of a script sets to infinite the time of execution to not have the PHP error ‘maximum execution time exceeded.’ It is also possible to specify this in the php.ini file.
What does the PHP error ‘Parse error in PHP – unexpected T_variable at line x’ means? : This is a PHP syntax error expressing that a mistake at the line x stops parsing and executing the program.
How can we connect to a MySQL database from a PHP script? : To be able to connect to a MySQL database, we must use mysqli_connect() function as follows: <?php $database = mysqli_connect(“HOST”, “USERNAME”,“PASSWORD”);mysqli_select_db($database,”DBNAME”);?>
How be the result set of Mysql handled in PHP? : The result set can be handled using mysqli_fetch_array, mysqli_fetch_assoc, mysqli_fetch_object or mysqli_fetch_row.
How is it possible to know the number of rows returned in the result set? : The function mysqli_num_rows() returns the number of rows in a result set.
Which function gives us the number of affected entries by a query? : mysqli_affected_rows() return the number of entries affected by an SQL query.
What is the difference between mysqli_fetch_object() and mysqli_fetch_array()? : The mysqli_fetch_object() function collects the first single matching record where mysqli_fetch_array() collects all matching records from the table in an array.
How can we access the data sent through the URL with the GET method? : To access the data sent via the GET method, we use $_GET array.
How can we access the data sent through the URL with the POST method? : To access the data sent this way, you use the $_POST array.
How can we check the value of a given variable is a number? : It is possible to use the dedicated function, is_numeric() to check whether it is a number or not.
How can we check the value of a given variable is alphanumeric? : It is possible to use the dedicated function, ctype_alnum to check whether it is an alphanumeric value or not.
How do I check if a given variable is empty? : If we want to check whether a variable has a value or not, it is possible to use the empty() function.
