PHP
Server-side scripting language PHP having an over twenty years’ history was primarily developed for web development, yet it is sometimes used as general purpose programming language. In 1994 Rasmus Lerdorf has created PHP naming it Personal Home Page, however now The PHP Development Team is maintaining it, and its acronym name has been designated as PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.
For a long time, until first serious efforts starting in 2010 and long-awaited formal PHP specification released in 2014, PHP language was evolving without written standards. PHP-FIG with PSR-initiatives, Composer dependency manager, and the Packagist repository are responsible for standardization efforts.
Versatility of PHP allows its code to be combined with multiple web template and content management systems and frameworks, embed it into HTML code. A PHP interpreter normally handles PHP code, that interpreter is implemented into a web server as a module. Any data type (media types included) could be the result of combining both executed and interpreted PHP code; the web server is responsible for that processing. CLI or common line interface is also an option of PHP code execution, that even allows a creation of standalone graphical apps. The Zend Engine powering the standard PHP is one of the keys to PHP’s success – it is freeware under the PHP License. That, along with its high versatility and wide capabilities, are the main reason PHP is so broadly spread. It is ported to a countless number of platforms and can be used on the overwhelming majority of web servers and OS.
In general, PHP runs on the server side (due to its server-side web development orientation). PHP code is usually used to create some dynamic content represented on web pages, but it can also be used for client-side GUI apps creation. PHP support is provided by most web-hosts, it is usually a free service, and PHP group and vast PHP Community provide both complete official source code and tons of frameworks and additional content, encouraging users to build, adapt and create.
Programming in PHP gives freedom to our creativity and makes the development process much faster. With its open source, great number of frameworks, global support and other useful features our savvy developers can realize any sophisticated idea or plan.
Simple view at PHP shows a craftsman at work, taking input from one set of clients (a stream or a file), processing it and outputting the results, that could happen to be HTML, XML or media formats. PHP4 brought a serious upgrade to PHP’s old interpreter now when PHP parser produces bytecode for the Zend Engine.
Microsoft’s ASP.NET, Sun Microsystems’ JavaServer Pages, mod_perl and PHP are all quite similar languages primarily aimed to the server-side scripting, even though PHP’s original idea was dynamic web-page creation.
So, PHP is a time proven versatile and constantly evolving tool, its features and freeware deployment brought it from very respectful 244 million installs on web servers with 39% share in 2013 to a staggering 82% market share in 10.2016.
Years of work with server side scripting have brought priceless and wide experience to our team. During our active years, we have worked with lots of great projects, providing reliable services for our clients and gaining valuable knowledge, helping us to serve the cause even better. Our PHP development team is very skilled and highly motivated. We would be glad to work on new and interesting projects with you.