Loading AI tools
Scripting language created in 1994 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared towards web development.[8] It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995.[9][10] The PHP reference implementation is now produced by the PHP Group.[11] PHP was originally an abbreviation of Personal Home Page,[12][13] but it now stands for the recursive acronym PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.[14]
| |
| Paradigm | Multi-paradigm: imperative, functional, object-oriented, procedural, reflective |
|---|---|
| Designed by | Rasmus Lerdorf |
| Developer | The PHP Development Team, Zend Technologies, PHP Foundation |
| First appeared | 8 June 1995[1][2] |
| Stable release | 8.4.1
/ 21 November 2024[3] |
| Typing discipline | Dynamic, weak, gradual[4] |
| Implementation language | C (primarily; some components C++) |
| OS | Unix-like, Windows, macOS, IBM i, OpenVMS, IBM Z |
| License | PHP License (most of Zend engine under Zend Engine License) for PHP 4 and later versions (only; dual-licensed GNU General Public License version 2 or any later version and PHP License for PHP versions 3.0 or earlier.[5]) |
| Filename extensions | .php,.phar,.phtml,.pht,.phps |
| Website | www |
| Major implementations | |
| Zend Engine, HHVM, PeachPie, Quercus, Parrot | |
| Influenced by | |
| Perl, C, C++, Java,[6] Tcl,[2] JavaScript[7] | |
| Influenced | |
| Hack, JSP, ASP, React JS | |
| |
PHP code is usually processed on a web server by a PHP interpreter implemented as a module, a daemon or a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) executable. On a web server, the result of the interpreted and executed PHP code—which may be any type of data, such as generated HTML or binary image data—would form the whole or part of an HTTP response. Various web template systems, web content management systems, and web frameworks exist that can be employed to orchestrate or facilitate the generation of that response. Additionally, PHP can be used for many programming tasks outside the web context, such as standalone graphical applications[15] and drone control.[16] PHP code can also be directly executed from the command line.
The standard PHP interpreter, powered by the Zend Engine, is free software released under the PHP License. PHP has been widely ported and can be deployed on most web servers on a variety of operating systems and platforms.[17]
The PHP language has evolved without a written formal specification or standard, with the original implementation acting as the de facto standard that other implementations aimed to follow.
W3Techs reports that as of 27 October 2024[update] (about two years since PHP 7 was discontinued and 11 months after the PHP 8.3 release), PHP 7 is still used by 50.0% of PHP websites, which is outdated and known to be insecure.[18][19] In addition, the even more outdated (discontinued for 5+ years) and insecure PHP 5 is used by 13.2% and the no longer supported PHP 8.0 is also very popular, so the majority of PHP websites do not use supported versions.
PHP development began in 1993[9] when Rasmus Lerdorf wrote several Common Gateway Interface (CGI) programs in C,[20][21] which he used to maintain his personal homepage. He extended them to work with web forms and to communicate with databases, and called this implementation "Personal Home Page/Forms Interpreter" or PHP/FI.
An example of the early PHP syntax:[22]
<!--include /text/header.html-->
<!--getenv HTTP_USER_AGENT-->
<!--if substr $exec_result Mozilla-->
Hey, you are using Netscape!<p>
<!--endif-->
<!--sql database select * from table where user='$username'-->
<!--ifless $numentries 1-->
Sorry, that record does not exist<p>
<!--endif exit-->
Welcome <!--$user-->!<p>
You have <!--$index:0--> credits left in your account.<p>
<!--include /text/footer.html-->
PHP/FI could be used to build simple, dynamic web applications. To accelerate bug reporting and improve the code, Lerdorf initially announced the release of PHP/FI as "Personal Home Page Tools (PHP Tools) version 1.0" on the Usenet discussion group comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi on 8 June 1995.[1][23] This release included basic functionality such as Perl-like variables, form handling, and the ability to embed HTML. By this point, the syntax had changed to resemble that of Perl, but was simpler, more limited, and less consistent.[12][11]
Early PHP was never intended to be a new programming language; rather, it grew organically, with Lerdorf noting in retrospect: "I don't know how to stop it [...] there was never any intent to write a programming language [...] I have absolutely no idea how to write a programming language [...] I just kept adding the next logical step on the way."[24] A development team began to form and, after months of work and beta testing, officially released PHP/FI 2 in November 1997.[25]
The fact that PHP was not originally designed, but instead was developed organically has led to inconsistent naming of functions and inconsistent ordering of their parameters.[26] In some cases, the function names were chosen to match the lower-level libraries which PHP was "wrapping",[27] while in some very early versions of PHP the length of the function names was used internally as a hash function, so names were chosen to improve the distribution of hash values.[28]
Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans rewrote the parser in 1997 and formed the base of PHP 3, changing the language's name to the recursive acronym PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.[11][29] Afterwards, public testing of PHP 3 began, and the official launch came in June 1998. Suraski and Gutmans then started a new rewrite of PHP's core, producing the Zend Engine in 1999.[30] They also founded Zend Technologies in Ramat Gan, Israel.[11]
On 22 May 2000, PHP 4, powered by the Zend Engine 1.0, was released.[11] By August 2008, this branch had reached version 4.4.9. PHP 4 is now no longer under development and nor are any security updates planned to be released.[31][32]
On 1 July 2004, PHP 5 was released, powered by the new Zend Engine II.[11] PHP 5 included new features such as improved support for object-oriented programming, the PHP Data Objects (PDO) extension (which defines a lightweight and consistent interface for accessing databases), and numerous performance enhancements.[33] In 2008, PHP 5 became the only stable version under development. Late static binding had been missing from previous versions of PHP, and was added in version 5.3.[34][35]
Many high-profile open-source projects ceased to support PHP 4 in new code from February 5, 2008, because of the GoPHP5 initiative,[36] provided by a consortium of PHP developers promoting the transition from PHP 4 to PHP 5.[37][38]
Over time, PHP interpreters became available on most existing 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems, either by building them from the PHP source code or by using pre-built binaries.[39] For PHP versions 5.3 and 5.4, the only available Microsoft Windows binary distributions were 32-bit IA-32 builds,[40][41] requiring Windows 32-bit compatibility mode while using Internet Information Services (IIS) on a 64-bit Windows platform. PHP version 5.5 made the 64-bit x86-64 builds available for Microsoft Windows.[42]
Official security support for PHP 5.6 ended on 31 December 2018.[43]
PHP received mixed reviews due to lacking native Unicode support at the core language level.[44][45] In 2005, a project headed by Andrei Zmievski was initiated to bring native Unicode support throughout PHP, by embedding the International Components for Unicode (ICU) library, and representing text strings as UTF-16 internally.[46] Since this would cause major changes both to the internals of the language and to user code, it was planned to release this as version 6.0 of the language, along with other major features then in development.[47]
However, a shortage of developers who understood the necessary changes, and performance problems arising from conversion to and from UTF-16, which is rarely used in a web context, led to delays in the project.[48] As a result, a PHP 5.3 release was created in 2009, with many non-Unicode features back-ported from PHP 6, notably namespaces. In March 2010, the project in its current form was officially abandoned, and a PHP 5.4 release was prepared to contain most remaining non-Unicode features from PHP 6, such as traits and closure re-binding.[49] Initial hopes were that a new plan would be formed for Unicode integration, but by 2014 none had been adopted.[citation needed]
During 2014 and 2015, a new major PHP version was developed, PHP 7. The numbering of this version involved some debate among internal developers.[50] While the PHP 6 Unicode experiments had never been released, several articles and book titles referenced the PHP 6 names, which might have caused confusion if a new release were to reuse the name.[51] After a vote, the name PHP 7 was chosen.[52]
The foundation of PHP 7 is a PHP branch that was originally dubbed PHP next generation (phpng). It was authored by Dmitry Stogov, Xinchen Hui and Nikita Popov,[53] and aimed to optimize PHP performance by refactoring the Zend Engine while retaining near-complete language compatibility.[54] By 14 July 2014, WordPress-based benchmarks, which served as the main benchmark suite for the phpng project, showed an almost 100% increase in performance. Changes from phpng make it easier to improve performance in future versions, as more compact data structures and other changes are seen as better suited for a successful migration to a just-in-time (JIT) compiler.[55] Because of the significant changes, the reworked Zend Engine was called Zend Engine 3, succeeding Zend Engine 2 used in PHP 5.[56]
Because of the major internal changes in phpng, it must receive a new major version number of PHP, rather than a minor PHP 5 release, according to PHP's release process.[57] Major versions of PHP are allowed to break backward-compatibility of code and therefore PHP 7 presented an opportunity for other improvements beyond phpng that require backward-compatibility breaks.[citation needed] In particular, it involved the following changes:
->, [], (),{}, and ::, with arbitrary meaningful left-side expressions.[59]foreach statement was changed to be more predictable.[61]mysql extension.[63]list() operator was changed to remove support for strings.[64]<% and %> and <script language="php"> ... </script>.[65]default clauses was fixed.[66]PHP 7 also included new language features. Most notably, it introduced return type declarations for functions[70] which complement the existing parameter type declarations, and support for the scalar types (integer, float, string, and boolean) in parameter and return type declarations.[71]
PHP 8 was released on 26 November 2020, and is currently the second-most used PHP major version. PHP 8 is a major version and has breaking changes from previous versions.[72][73] New features and notable changes include:
Just-in-time compilation is supported in PHP 8.[74]
PHP 8's JIT compiler can provide substantial performance improvements for some use cases,[75][76] while (then PHP) developer Nikita Popov stated that the performance improvements for most websites will be less substantial than the upgrade from PHP 5 to PHP 7.[77] Substantial improvements are expected more for mathematical-type operations than for common web-development use cases.[77] Additionally, the JIT compiler provides the future potential to move some code from C to PHP, due to the performance improvements for some use cases.[78]
PHP 8 introduced the match expression.[79] The match expression is conceptually similar to a switch statement and is more compact for some use cases.[80] Because match is an expression, its result can be assigned to a variable or returned from a function.[81]
PHP 8 introduced union types, a new static return type, and a new mixed type.[72]
"Attributes", often referred to as "annotations" in other programming languages, were added in PHP 8, which allow metadata to be added to classes.[72]
throw was changed from being a statement to being an expression.[82] This allows exceptions to be thrown in places that were not previously possible.[72]
PHP 8 includes changes to allow alternate, more concise, or more consistent syntaxes in a number of scenarios. For example, the nullsafe operator is similar to the null coalescing operator ??, but used when calling methods.[83] The following code snippet will not throw an error if getBirthday() returns null:
$human_readable_date = $user->getBirthday()?->diffForHumans();
Constructor property promotion has been added as "syntactic sugar," allowing class properties to be set automatically when parameters are passed into a class constructor.[72] This reduces the amount of boilerplate code that must be written.[84]
Other minor changes include support for use of ::class on objects, which serves as an alternative for the use of get_class();[72] non-capturing catches in try-catch blocks; variable syntax tweaks to resolve inconsistencies; support for named arguments; and support for trailing commas in parameter lists, which adds consistency with support for trailing commas in other contexts, such as in arrays.[73]
WeakMap holds references to objects, but these references do not prevent such objects from being garbage collected.[85] This can provide performance improvements in scenarios where data is being cached; this is of particular relevance for object–relational mappings (ORM).[72]DateTime objects from interfaces, and the addition of a Stringable interface that can be used for type hinting.[72]str_contains(), str_starts_with(), and str_ends_with();[86] fdiv(); get_debug_type(); and get_resource_id()[72]token_get_all()[72]PHP 8.1 was released on November 25, 2021.[88] It added support for enumerations (also called "enums"), declaring properties as readonly (which prevents modification of the property after initialization), and array unpacking with string keys. The new never type can be used to indicate that a function does not return.[89]
PHP 8.2 was released on December 8, 2022.[90] New in this release are readonly classes (whose instance properties are implicitly readonly), disjunctive normal form (DNF) types, and the random extension, which provides a pseudorandom number generator with an object-oriented API,[91] Sensitive Parameter value redaction, and a ton of other features.
PHP 8.3 was released on November 23, 2023. This release introduced readonly array properties, allowing arrays to be declared as immutable after initialization. It also added support for class aliases for built-in PHP classes, new methods for random float generation in the Random extension, and enhanced PHP INI settings with fallback value support. Additionally, the new stream_context_set_options function provides improved API for stream manipulation, among other updates and deprecations.
PHP 8.4 was released on November 21, 2024.
| Version | Release date | Supported until[92] | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | 8 June 1995 | Officially called "Personal Home Page Tools (PHP Tools)". This is the first use of the name "PHP".[11] | |
| 2.0 | 1 November 1997 | Officially called "PHP/FI 2.0". This is the first release that could actually be characterised as PHP, being a standalone language with many features that have endured to the present day. | |
| 3.0 | 6 June 1998 | 20 October 2000[92] | Development moves from one person to multiple developers. Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans rewritten the base for this version.[11] |
| 4.0 | 22 May 2000[93] | 23 June 2001[92] | Added more advanced two-stage parse/execute tag-parsing system called the Zend engine.[94] |
| 4.1 | 10 December 2001[95] | 12 March 2002[92] | Introduced "superglobals" ($_GET, $_POST, $_SESSION, etc.)[94] |
| 4.2 | 22 April 2002[96] | 6 September 2002[92] | Disabled register_globals by default. Data received over the network is not inserted directly into the global namespace anymore, closing possible security holes in applications.[94] |
| 4.3 | 27 December 2002[97] | 31 March 2005[92] | Introduced the command-line interface (CLI), to supplement the CGI.[94][98] |
| 4.4 | 11 July 2005[99] | 7 August 2008[92] | Fixed a memory corruption bug, which required breaking binary compatibility with extensions compiled against PHP version 4.3.x.[100] |
| 5.0 | 13 July 2004[101] | 5 September 2005[92] | Zend Engine II with a new object model.[102] |
| 5.1 | 24 November 2005[103] | 24 August 2006[92] | Performance improvements with the introduction of compiler variables in re-engineered PHP Engine.[102] Added PHP Data Objects (PDO) as a consistent interface for accessing databases.[104] |
| 5.2 | 2 November 2006[105] | 6 January 2011[92] | Enabled the filter extension by default. Native JSON support.[102] |
| 5.3 | 30 June 2009[106] | 14 August 2014[92] | Namespace support; late static bindings, jump label (limited goto), anonymous functions, closures, PHP archives (phar), garbage collection for circular references, improved Windows support, sqlite3, mysqlnd as a replacement for libmysql as the underlying library for the extensions that work with MySQL, fileinfo as a replacement for mime_magic for better MIME support, the Internationalization extension, and deprecation of ereg extension. |
| 5.4 | 1 March 2012[107] | 3 September 2015[92] | Trait support, short array syntax support. Removed items: register_globals, safe_mode, allow_call_time_pass_reference, session_register(), session_unregister() and session_is_registered(). Built-in web server.[108] Several improvements to existing features, performance and reduced memory requirements. |
| 5.5 | 20 June 2013[109] | 10 July 2016[110] | Support for generators, finally blocks for exceptions handling, OpCache (based on Zend Optimizer+) bundled in official distribution.[111] |
| 5.6 | 28 August 2014[112] | 31 December 2018[110] | Constant scalar expressions, variadic functions, argument unpacking, new exponentiation operator, extensions of the use statement for functions and constants, new phpdbg debugger as a SAPI module, and other smaller improvements.[113] |
| 6.x | Not released | — | Abandoned version of PHP that planned to include native Unicode support.[114][115] |
| 7.0 | 3 December 2015[116] | 10 January 2019[57] | Zend Engine 3 (performance improvements[55] and 64-bit integer support on Windows[117]), uniform variable syntax,[59] AST-based compilation process,[118] added Closure::call(),[119] bitwise shift consistency across platforms,[120] ?? (null coalesce) operator,[121] Unicode code point escape syntax,[122] return type declarations,[70] scalar type (integer, float, string and boolean) declarations,[71] <=> "spaceship" three-way comparison operator,[123] generator delegation,[124] anonymous classes,[125] simpler and more consistently available CSPRNG API,[126] replacement of many remaining internal PHP "errors" with the more modern exceptions,[58] and shorthand syntax for importing multiple items from a namespace.[127] |
| 7.1 | 1 December 2016 | 1 December 2019[110] | iterable type,[128] nullable types,[129] void return type,[130] class constant visibility modifiers,[131] short list syntax,[132] multi-catch[133] |
| 7.2 | 30 November 2017 | 30 November 2020[110] | Object parameter and return type declaration,[134] libsodium extension,[135] abstract method overriding,[136] parameter type widening[137] |
| 7.3 | 6 December 2018[138] | 6 December 2021 | Flexible Heredoc and Nowdoc syntax,[139] support for reference assignment and array deconstruction with list(),[140] PCRE2 support,[141] hrtime function[142] |
| 7.4 | 28 November 2019[143] | 28 November 2022 | Typed properties 2.0,[144] preloading,[145] null-coalescing assignment operator,[146] improve openssl_random_pseudo_bytes,[147] weak references,[85] foreign function interface (FFI),[148] always available hash extension,[149] password hash registry,[150] multibyte string splitting,[151] reflection for references,[152] unbundle ext/wddx,[153] new custom object serialization mechanism[154] |
| 8.0 | 26 November 2020[155] | 26 November 2023 | Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation,[74] arrays starting with a negative index,[156] stricter/saner language semantics (validation for abstract trait methods),[157] saner string to number comparisons,[158] saner numeric strings,[159] TypeError on invalid arithmetic/bitwise operators,[160] reclassification of various engine errors,[161] consistent type errors for internal functions,[162] fatal error for incompatible method signatures[163]), locale-independent float to string conversion,[164] variable syntax tweaks,[165] attributes,[166][167][168][169] named arguments,[170] match expression,[171] constructor property promotion,[172] union types,[173] mixed type,[174] static return type,[175] nullsafe operator,[83] non-capturing catches,[176] throw expression,[82] JSON extension is always available.[177] |
| 8.1 | 25 November 2021[178] | 31 December 2025 | Explicit octal integer literal notation,[179] enumerations,[180] read-only properties,[181] first-class callable syntax,[182] new in initializers,[183] pure intersection types,[184] never return type,[185] final class constraints,[186] fibers[187] |
| 8.2 | 8 December 2022[188] | 31 December 2026 | Readonly classes,[189] null, false, and true as stand-alone types,[190][191] locale-independent case conversion,[192] disjunctive normal form types,[193] constants in traits[194] |
| 8.3 | 23 November 2023[195] | 31 December 2027 | Typed class constants,[196] dynamic class constant fetch,[197] #[\Override] attribute,[198] deep-cloning of read-only properties,[199] new json_validate function,[200] randomizer additions,[201] the command-line linter supports multiple files |
| 8.4 | 21 November 2024[202] | 31 December 2028 | Property hooks, asymmetric visibility, an updated DOM API, performance improvements, bug fixes, and general cleanup. |
| 9.0 | Unannounced | ||
Legend: Old version, not maintained Old version, still maintained Latest version Future release | |||
Beginning on 28 June 2011, the PHP Development Team implemented a timeline for the release of new versions of PHP.[57] Under this system, at least one release should occur every month. Once per year, a minor release should occur which may include new features. Every minor release should at least be supported for two years with security and bug fixes, followed by at least one year of only security fixes, for a total of a three-year release process for every minor release. No new features, unless small and self-contained, are to be introduced into a minor release during the three-year release process.
The mascot of the PHP project is the elePHPant, a blue elephant with the PHP logo on its side, designed by Vincent Pontier[203] in 1998.[204] "The (PHP) letters were forming the shape of an elephant if viewed in a sideways angle."[205] The elePHPant is sometimes differently coloured when in plush toy form.[206]
Many variations of this mascot have been made over the years. Only the elePHPants based on the original design by Vincent Pontier are considered official by the community.[207] These are collectable and some of them are extremely rare.[208]
![Thumb](#/media/File:"Hello_World"_Application_in_PHP.png)
The following "Hello, World!" program is written in PHP code embedded in an HTML document:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>PHP "Hello, World!" program</title>
</head>
<body>
<p><?= 'Hello, World!' ?></p>
</body>
</html>
However, as no requirement exists for PHP code to be embedded in HTML, the simplest version of Hello, World! may be written like this, with the closing tag ?> omitted as preferred in files containing pure PHP code.[209]
<?php echo 'Hello, World!';
The PHP interpreter only executes PHP code within its delimiters. Anything outside of its delimiters is not processed by PHP, although the non-PHP text is still subject to control structures described in PHP code. The most common delimiters are <?php to open and ?> to close PHP sections. The shortened form <? also exists. This short delimiter makes script files less portable since support for them can be disabled in the local PHP configuration and it is therefore discouraged.[210][211] Conversely, there is no recommendation against the echo short tag <?=.[212] Prior to PHP 5.4.0, this short syntax for echo only works with the short_open_tag configuration setting enabled, while for PHP 5.4.0 and later it is always available.[213][214][210] The purpose of all these delimiters is to separate PHP code from non-PHP content, such as JavaScript code or HTML markup.[215] So the shortest "Hello, World!" program written in PHP is:
<?='Hello, World!';
The first form of delimiters, <?php and