Learn PHP on the Fly

Learn PHP on the Fly! This is the title of my Ebook.

I am writing an Ebook on PHP. The book provides you a quick tour of PHP and how to start your career in PHP. The objective of the book is to provide all the information about PHP in a nutshell. The book is especially written for those who want to make make a career in PHP but don't know from where to start. It guides you through the whole process of seeking a job in PHP.

I am hoping to complete the book by next week. And I guess it will be launched in next week as well.

I hope you will all like this Ebook.

Some Excerpts From My Ebook:

"The good thing about making a career in PHP is that you can do it on the fly. And you need not required to have a formal degree in information technology. All you need to have some programing skills and a go getter attitude."

"Forms are very important part of a website and often used to collect data from the user. A very simple form example is Login Form. Login form is used to provide access to a website.

A form contains different type of items to collect data. So it’s important to understand different elements of a form."

"There is no need to declare a variable in PHP. They are automatically declared as soon as you assign a value to it."

Regards,
Subodh Raghav

PHP: In a Nutshell

What is PHP?

Let’s start with the basics!

PHP stands for “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor”, initially known as PHP Tools / Personal Home Page. It was created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995.

It is a programming language for developing interactive websites and web applications. The language syntax is very similar to C. It’s easy to learn and can run on different platforms like Windows, Mac, Linux and many more.

And it’s Free to download and use!

A PHP Program looks very similar to a C program. 

<?PHP
      Echo "Hello World";
?>

Applications of PHP:

I would like to learn PHP and want to make a career in PHP.

But I have a question here!

What are the applications that can be developed using PHP?

Depends on what you would like it to do. Possibilities with PHP are unlimited for a good PHP programmer.

Following is the brief list of applications that can be developed using PHP. It could be from an E commerce website to Facebook applications and more. Some common applications of PHP are:

• Ecommerce Sites
• Desktop Applications:
• Facebook Applications
• PDF Files
• Mailing Lists
• Image Processing
• CMS based sites
• Word Press Plugins
• And many more

You may also like:

How to create a Captcha enabled Contact Form in PHP

How to Create a Captcha enabled Web Form in 5 Minutes

In this tutorial, you will learn about how to create a contact form with captcha verification using PHP / HTML. I assume you have the prior knowledge of HTML and PHP to understand this tutorial.

Let's understand Captcha first:

It's a kind of test to know if the response is generated by a human or generated by a software / bot.

Common Captcha Test:

The user needs to enter the letters from a distorted image in the text box. This text is difficult to read / decode by softwares / bots but can be easily read by humans.

Here is the step by step procedure:

Step 1: This requires you to create a PHP file for creating captcha image with text. Create a PHP file Captcha.php and save it in your local folder. Copy and paste the code below in this file.

<?php

session_start();

//To generate 5 digit random number
$text = rand(10000,99999);

//To assign this number to session variable
$_SESSION["captchacode"] = $text;

//To set image height and width
$height = 25;
$width = 65;

//To create image using imagecreate function 
$cimage = imagecreate($width, $height);
$bg_color = imagecolorallocate($cimage, 0, 0, 0);
$text_color = imagecolorallocate($cimage, 255, 255, 255);

$font_size = 14;//To set the fint size of teh captcha text
 
imagestring($cimage, $font_size, 5, 5, $text, $text_color);//Create captcha text on image
imagepng($cimage);

?>

Step 2: This requires you to create a PHP file for creating a contact form. Create a PHP file Captcha_Form.php and save it in your local folder. Copy and paste the code below in this file.

<table width="300" align="left" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1">

<form action="submit_form.php" method="post">

<tr>
    <td>Name: </td>
    <td><input type="text" name="name" size="10" maxlength="10" tabindex="1"></td>
</tr>

<tr>
    <td>Email:</td>
    <td><input type="text" name="email" size="20" maxlength="20" tabindex="2"></td>
</tr>

<tr>
    <td>Enter Code:  </td>
    <td><input type="text" name="captchacode" size="5" maxlength="5" tabindex="3" />
    <span style= "margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 0px;">
        <img src="captcha.php"></span>
    </td>
</tr>

<tr>
    <td/>
     <td><input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit"/></td>
</tr>

</form>

</table>

Step 3: This requires you to create a PHP file to verify the cpatcha code with the code in captcha image. Create a PHP file Submit_Form.php and save it in your local folder. Copy and paste the code below in this file.

<?php

session_start();

if ($_POST["captchacode"] != $_SESSION["captchacode"] OR $_SESSION["captchacode"]=='') 
     echo  '<strong>You are not Human.</strong>';
else
{
     // add form data processing code here
     echo  '<strong>You are Human.</strong>';
}

?>

Final Output:

You need to test the captcha in a browser. Open Captcha_Form.php in your browser. The form will look like this:

How to Test:

You can test the this form by entering captcha code from the image in the Enter Code text box. If the captcha code matches with the code in captcha image it will display You are Human else it will display You are not Human.