Learning Php?

DY357LX

<div class="IPBDescription">Where To Start And What's Needed.</div> I did a Search before posting but nothing came up.
I apologise if this has been posted several times in the past.

There's a job on offer near me for website based stuff
and it's really good pay. But knowledge of PHP is needed
and I don't have any.

Can anyone tell me whats needed (programs etc?)
or point me in the direction of some tutorials or websites
that might be able to help.

Thanks.

eediot

I would suggest getting jobs that interest you and you will have fun doing, as well as being good at. That said, php is hard, because competence that would be needed in a job like that comes only from a lot of documenting and experience. Go check out www.php.net. There's not much more to say - pick a script you want to make, go set out figuring how to make it. That's the only way to learn sufficiently for the job, but you won't get the job because it'll take a long time to learn. So either lie and get the job, or learn it for future job prospects.

Dorian_Gray

Programs: PHP from php.net, apache from httpd.apache.org and notepad from the start menu.

There are better editors (obviously) but notepad works fine if you don't want to buy Dreamweaver (better for web design) or PHPEd (best php editor ever IMHO). Basically you need to set up an apache server and have it run .php files through the PHP interpreter. Instructions are on PHP.net, as well as one of the best online manuals I've ever seen. Just go to php.net/whatever, with the whatever being whatever command you want to look up. As for a book on begininng PHP, O'Reilly has a nice one for PHP5, which has a lot of changes over PHP4, especially in the object-oriented aspects. There's a lot of new stuff to deal with for classes, but most of it is similar to stuff in other high-level languages such as Java, and to a certain extent C++.

If you've ever programmed before in Java/C++/any other C-style language, then PHP will be easy to learn. If you haven't, then you've got a LOT of learning to do.

0blique

If you're interested in learning a new language, I would suggest getting a book (O'Reilly is pretty good at this IMHO). I like using www.php.net as a reference, but I wouldn't recommend learning off of it (seems like a little too much information provided in one place).

That being said, if you're experienced with other programming languages, particularly something like perl, than you should find it pretty easy to learn. PHP isn't that complicated, and shouldn't be too hard to learn, even if you've never really done a lot of programming before, as it's designed to be easy to use.

Like everyone else said, if you want to try it out, you can download apache, php and follow the installation instructions that come with each. Then look around on google for the many php tutorials that are out there.

esuna

the online documents on PHP.net are probably the best PHP resource you'll ever find. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->

jumpingjoda

Yes esuna, it's perfect as reference. But he will need more to actually learn the language, if he has no clue what to do first.

I don't recommend to get apache and php seperate, get <a href='http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html' target='_blank'>XAMPP</a> It combines the two components and installs in a few clics, no configuration required. It also adds MySQL and the needed tools to maintain the whole package (such as phpMyAdmin).

O'Reilly books are good, get them if you need any book.

SoulSkorpion

Actually, the PHP documentation is <i>excellent</i> as far as official language docs go. It's perfectly adequate for learning the language, if you already know how to program.

The tricky thing about learning PHP is that since it's, uh, multiplayer only you'll either need access to a webserver or to run a webserver on your machine (such as Apache).