Back to: AMPLIFIERS
HTML is composed of elements. These elements structure the webpage and define its content.
In the previous exercise, we explored how PHP can be sent from the back-end to the front-end where it is received as HTML to be displayed by a browser.
PHP is flexible and can also be executed from the terminal. We can use PHP as a general purpose programming language to write programs that give simple instructions to the computer without involving HTML or the web. When this is done, the output of the program is logged to the terminal. This is useful when testing functionality or for writing simple local programs.
When writing a PHP script file, we still need to denote that we are beginning our PHP code using <?php, but the closing tag is no longer required. It is typically left out by convention.
For example, if the following code were placed in index.php:
This diagram displays an HTML paragraph element. As we can see, the paragraph element is made up of one opening tag (
When the code above is run, "Hello, World!" will be output to the terminal.
Generally, PHP ignores whitespace (tabs, spaces, new lines), so this code yields the same result as the previous example:
Unlike many other languages, PHP is not always case-sensitive, so Echo is a valid statement in PHP. However, it’s best practice to use standard casing – in this case, echo.