Covers the latest major release of PHP, the most popular opensource Web scripting language, in the friendly, easy-to-understandFor Dummies style* PHP is installed on nearly nine million servers, and usage hasgrown at the rate of 6.5 percent per month for the past twoyears* PHP is easy to learn, well suited for Web development, and canbe embedded with HTML, making it a good choice for creating dynamicWeb pages for e-commerce sites and other Web applications; adatabase-friendly language, it connects easily to Sybase, MySQL,mSQL, Oracle, and other databases* Explains how to acquire and install PHP, how PHP's featuresmake it a useful scripting language, and how to use PHP for threeof the most common applications: interactive Web sites, databasestorage, and common operating system tasks

Introduction.Part I: Say Hello to the PHP Scripting Language.Chapter 1: Getting to Know PHP.Chapter 2: Setting Up the Environment.Chapter 3: Creating Your First PHP Script.Part II: Variables and Data.Chapter 4: Using Variables in PHP Scripts.Chapter 5: Working with Data.Chapter 6: Storing Data in Groups by Using Arrays.Part III: Basic PHP Programming.Chapter 7: Controlling the Flow of the Script.Chapter 8: Reusing PHP Code.Chapter 9: Object-Oriented Programming Meets PHP.Part IV: Common PHP Applications.Chapter 10: The Basics of Web Applications.Chapter 11: Other Web Applications.Chapter 12: Storing Data with PHP.Chapter 13: PHP and Your Operating System.Chapter 14: PHP Extensions.Part V: The Part of Tens.Chapter 15: Ten Things to Look For When Troubleshooting aScript.Chapter 16: Ten PHP Resources You Can't Live Without.Part VI: Appendixes.Appendix A: Installing PHP.Appendix B: Useful PHP Built-in Functions.Index.