PHP is a simple, yet very powerful server-side scripting language. You write HTML pages and sprinkle little bits of PHP code in between "<?php" and "?>" and magic happens.

1. Simple include:

   To include the contents of one file into another:

   <?php include "myfile.php"; ?>
   

2. How to set vaiables

   <?php $majorSection="Contact Us"; $minorSection="Overview"; ?>
   
   

3. How to write text to the browser

   <p><?php echo "Hello World"; ?></p> 
   

4. How to write variables to the browser

   
   <p><?php echo "Hello World"; ?></p> 
   

5. How to join text together

   Using the "." character you can concatenate strings and variables

   <?php
   echo "Hello" . " Rachel";
   ?>
   

6. How to define a method and invoke it from a page

   
   <?php
   function writeSubLink($current,$minor,$target) {
   echo "\n<li class=\"leftpane\">";
   if($current == $minor) {
       echo "<span class=\"navlinks_sub\">$current</span>";
   } else {
       echo "<a href=\"$target\" class=\"navlinks_sub\">$current</a>";
   }
   echo "</li>";
   }
   
   
   if($majorSection == "Our Services"){
   echo "<ul>";
   writeSubLink("Options Counseling",$minorSection,"counseling.php");
   writeSubLink("Support Services",$minorSection,"services.php");
   echo "</ul>";
   }
   ?>
   
   

7. How to access name value parameters on the url

   You can use "$_GET[]". For example if the url is "http://www.fincher.org/news/photo.php?pic=2007/originals/2007-08-30-2151-IMG_5649.JPG". Then the following will pluck the variable "pic" from the url and replace its value as the src for the image.

   <img src="
   <?php echo $_GET['pic']; ?>
   " />