PHP: the Good Stuff - SQL, Encryption and Style (PHP 3)

Member Name: Manx

Product:	PHP 3
Date:	18/04/09 (40 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Slick and silky smooth

Disadvantages: If the only OS you know is Windows then you might be in trouble

PHP, at last, brings the touch of elegance to webpage design. No, I'm not talking about making the front end of your page look pretty - loads of people are already a dab hand at that (Just look at the Ciao.Com page layout) - I'm talking about the guts of the page. I am talking about the unseen wizardry that will either sink or float your page.

PHP has style. It is a real programming language but it does not get into the dots, blobs and squiggles that some of the older (Perl, for example) languages can descend into. On the same token, PHP is not just a set of extra tabs that closely mimic HTML (Some would say that ColdFusion is just that). You can do a lot with PHP. You can do a lot more with PHP4. Array handling is a dream, your PHP scripting can take clumps of information that a Posting Form might be able to churn out and then sculpt it into anything it needs to be.


Ah yes, SQL. SQL is the King of all Database Languages (I could and I should write an entire opinion on SQL alone). PHP supports connections to such little gems as mSQL and MySQL. MySQL is wonderfully free now. If you are starting up a company then you can get your Linux OS for free, your PHP for free, Apache for free and then your SQL for free. Lovely. PHP supports a range of darling commands and queries to the SQL database. For example, with PHP you can find out the name of a SQL column, the type of data it holds (Ints, Chars, etc) and the maximum size for that field... what a perfect way to build a generic validation function.

PHP supports some powerful encryption tools. It is possible to configure your copy of PHP to use the deep and libraries. With the twin tools of Public and Secret Keys you need never worry about data privacy again. Well, not as far as code breaking goes... if your password is still "ITgod" then it will still be the first password the hacker tries :)

Also under Manx on ciao! thanks for reading.

Summary: Use PHP and smile.

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