PHP: From Beginner to Mastery (5th Edition)

This book is a PHP introductory tutorial in the "Software Development Video Lecture Hall" series, aimed at readers with zero background, systematically covering the skills needed for web development with PHP. The book is divided into 4 parts and 25 chapters. The Fundamentals part covers first acquaintance with PHP, setting up the PHP environment and development tools, PHP language basics, flow control statements, string operations, regular expressions, PHP arrays, PHP interaction with web pages, PHP interaction with JavaScript, and dates and times; the Core Techniques part covers Cookies and Sessions, graphics and image processing, the file system, object orientation, PHP encryption, MySQL database basics, the phpMyAdmin graphical management tool, PHP operating MySQL databases, the PDO database abstraction layer, and the ThinkPHP framework; the Advanced Applications part covers Smarty templating, PHP with XML, and PHP with Ajax; the Project Practice part uses two cases—"Developing an E-Commerce Website with Smarty Templates" and "Developing the Programming e-Learning Site with the ThinkPHP Framework"—to link the grammar, database, template, and framework knowledge learned earlier into a complete development workflow. All knowledge points are explained with examples, code is annotated, and each chapter ends with practice and exercises; the accompanying resources include 212 micro-lecture videos totaling about 25 hours, 271 application examples, and 61 practice exercises, plus an example library, module library, project case library, test question bank, and interview question bank—ideal for learning by doing.