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PHP is a scripting language generally used to make websites. PHP is mainly used for design server-side applications. Actually PHP is a server-side scripting language that is used to connecting Web Page with a DataBase such as asp or JSP. Some basic uses of PHP are given below:

Uses of PHP

• It is used to create dynamic website.
• To Interacting with the webserver (Apache etc)
• To interact with any back-end/database server e.g. MySQL
• To interact with the native file system of the OS
• To implement the business logical layers (one or more)
• It can Encrypt Data
• Access Cookies variable and set cookies
• Using PHP you can restrict the user to access a specific web page
• PHP usually used to output HTML code to the browser
• Used to connect web application with DataBase
• It is used to send and receives E-Mails.
• You can use PHP to find today's date, and then build a calendar for the month.
• If you host banner advertisements on your website, you can use PHP to rotate them randomly.
• Using PHP you can count your visitors on your website.
• You can use PHP to create a special area of your website for members.
• Using PHP you can create a login page for your user.
• Using PHP you can add, delete, modify elements within your database through PHP. Access cookies variables and set cookies.
• Using PHP, you can restrict users to access some pages of your website.
• It can encrypt data.
• PHP performs system functions, i.e. from files on a system it can create, open, read, write, and close them.
• It can handle forms, i.e. gather data from files, save data to a file.

Why use PHP

• It runs on different platforms such as Windows, Linux, Unix, etc.
• This language is very simple to learn and runs efficiently on the server-side.
• It is compatible with almost all servers used today, such as Apache, IIS, etc.
• It supports many databases such as MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, etc.
• It is perfectly suited for Web development and can be embedded directly into the HTML code.
• PHP can also be used to create dynamic web pages.
• It is often used together with Apache (webserver) on various operating systems. It can be also used with Microsoft's IIS on Windows.
• It is open source and it is free downloadable

Applications of PHP

• GUI -based applications
• Web pages and web-based applications
• Web Content Management Systems (CMS)
• eCommerce applications
• Image Processing and graphic design
• Data representation

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