PHP – Applications, Advantages & Disadvantages

PHP is a scripting language designed for developing dynamic web pages. While its principal purpose was server-side scripting, it has grown to incorporate a command line interface capability and can be used to develop client-side Graphical User Interface (GUI) applications as well.

PHP – Applications

1. Web Pages and Web-Based Applications:

   Any web page or web application developed in the current ecosystem needs to offer a high degree of customization, provide highly interactive user interface, be capable of performing online transactions and integrate with database systems. Through its three-tiered architecture which works on browser, server and database system in a linear manner, PHP offers a reliable solution to achieve these features. As a consequence, PHP is used by over 82% of websites for server side programming; over 244 million websites are built using PHP. Further, web-based enterprise applications and a multitude of Facebook apps are also scripted in PHP.

2. Web Content Management Systems:

   PHP offers support to numerous databases including MySQL, Oracle and MS Access and is capable of interacting with other services using protocols such as IMAP, LDAP, POP3, NNTP, SNMP, HTTP and COM . As a result, PHP has been used for creating popular web Content Management Systems (CMS), including WordPress and its plugins, user-facing portion of Facebook, Joomla, Drupal, Moodle, Silverstripe, MediaWiki, Digg and others.

3. eCommerce Applications:

   From small businesses to large enterprises, selling to online shoppers is now an indispensable requirement. Through use of frameworks like CodeIgniter and CakePHP, PHP allows creation of eCommerce applications in a swift and simple manner. Many of the highly used eCommerce platforms, such as OpenCart, Magento, PrestaShop, Zen Cart, AgoraCart and Ubercart, have all been created on PHP.

4. GUI-Based Applications:

   While PHP is largely used as a scripting language for web-based applications, it is also possible to employ it for creating desktop graphical user interface (GUI) based applications. Tools like PHP-GTK 2, DevelStudio and ZZEE PHP GUI, allow scripting in PHP, compiling it into .exe capable of running standalone.

5. Create Flash:

   An open source library, such as Ming, helps to create .SWF format movies which include most of the features of Flash – gradients, bitmaps (pngs and jpeg), morphs, shapes, text, button, actions and animations. Further, Flash elements like login-form and email form can be easily created and incorporated into dynamic web pages using PHP.

6. Image Processing and Graphic Design:

   Apart from managing text content, PHP can also be used to manipulate images. Integration of various image processing libraries, such as GD library, Imagine and ImageMagick, in PHP applications allows rotating, cropping, resizing, creating thumbnail pictures, adding watermarks and generating output images in multiple formats including jpeg, gif, wbmp, xpm and png. This feature is an essential requirement for building robust websites and web applications.

7. Data Representation:

   Through use of tools like Image_Graph, PHP can be used to create a variety of graphs, charts, scatter-dot plots and other means of graphical representations. This feature finds application across client-side desktop applications, eCommerce websites and other applications where data needs to be presented in a concise and graphical manner.

   Further, by use of a library called PDFLib, PHP can be used to generate PDF files. This can facilitate the creation of an online invoicing system where an HTML-driven invoice is created in PDF format.

PHP – Advantages

Following are the top 10 advantages of php which are as follows:

1. Open Source:

PHP is open-source and free of cost, which helps developers to install it quickly and readily available for use. There are a lot of PHP frameworks and developer can choose any of the frameworks to work. All the features and tools will be provided to the developer for that framework easily. As it is open-source, it makes the system ready with PHP in quick time and makes the web development faster with help of providing the tools and other features easily.

2. Platform Independent:

PHP is mainly supported by all the operating systems like Windows, Unix, Linux etc. The PHP based developed web applications can be easily run on any platform. It can be integrated with other programming language and database easily and there is no requirement of re-development. It helps in saving a lot of effort and cost.

3. Simple and Easy:

This advantage of PHP is simple and easy to learn and code. It is mainly organized code and clean, which helps the new developers also. The command functions of PHP can easily learn and understood. The one who knows any programming language can easily work on PHP. It is simple to learn, as its learning curve is not large. The syntax is simple and flexible to use.

4. Database:

PHP is easily connected with the database and make the connection securely with databases. It has a built-in module that is used to connect to the database easily. There are many web applications, which require strong programming language with a good database management system. PHP and its database connection solve the purpose for development of web applications. It reduces the time to connect to a database management system as well. Multiple databases can be integrated with PHP.

5. Fast:

PHP is known as the fastest Programming language as compared to another. PHP applications can be easily loaded over the slow Internet and data speed. Other applications take a lot of time to connect the database and fetch the data after executing certain queries to the database. PHP does not face this problem and it loads the website very easily and fast. The fast speed of PHP provides the developer with an edge to develop the web applications in PHP programming language.

6. Maintenance:

PHP framework is mainly used to make the web application development easier and maintain the code automatically. The model view controller architecture in PHP framework helps the code to be easily maintained and used. The MVC architecture helps the separation of a file for different module separately.

7. Support:

This advantage of PHP has great online support and community, which helps the new developers to help in writing the code and developing the web applications. The documentation provided at the official site helps in using the different features of PHP and its framework. The latest updates are released timely by the PHP to make it better for the developer to develop the web-based applications.

8. Testing:

PHP based web applications can be easily tested. PHP unit uses to perform the unit testing quickly and easily. It also helps the programmers to write test cases and perform the testing smoothly. For PHP based web applications, the developers do not need to write the additional code. PHP frameworks help in automating the different tasks.

9. Security:

PHP frameworks built-in feature and tools make it easier to protect the web applications from the outer attacks and security threats. The security threats can be like SQL injection, data tampering, and forgery etc. To protect from these security threats, developers used PHP frameworks for developing web applications.

10. Stable:

PHP is also stable as compared to other programming languages. It has been in existence for a long time. The developers have worked on PHP to make it easy for the programmers to work on developing the PHP web-based applications. They have fixed the issues and bugs over the period of time for the different version of PHP and make it very stable.

 

Conclusion – Advantages of PHP

PHP has a lot of advantages and some are described above. It has disadvantages as well but it is still better than other programming languages. It is being widely used the programming language and many people are using this programming language for creating the different types of web-based application. It is used because of its features and open source. It does not cost and able to develop the customized application integrated with other programming languages as well.

PHP – Disadvantages

• Security: Since it is open sourced, all people can see the source code. If there are bugs in the source code, it can be used by people to explore the weakness of it.
• Not suitable of large applications: It will be difficult to use it for programming huge applications. Since the programming language is not highly modular, huge applications created out of the programming language will be difficult to maintain.
• Weak type: Implicit conversion may surprise unwary programmers and lead to unexpected bugs. Confusion between arrays and hash tables. This is slow and could be faster. There are often a few ways to accomplish a task. It is not strongly typed. It is interpreted and uses curly braces.
• Poor Error Handling Method: The framework has a bad error handling method. It is not a proper solution for the developers. Therefore, as a qualified PHP developer, you will have to overcome it.
• PHP is unable to handle large number of apps: The technology is helpless to support a bunch of apps. It is highly tough to manage because, it is not competent modular. It already imitates the features of Java language.

It will not give the performance of, for example, “C” or “C++” languages. Because it is a scripting language and is interpreted it will be a bit slower than the optimized “C++” programs.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------\

Programmers need to learn PHP frameworks instead of PHP

The PHP frameworks enable programmers to add functionality to a web application without writing additional code. But the programmers have to put some time and effort to learn the PHP framework. They can even learn and use certain frameworks without being proficient in PHP coding.

Quality of PHP frameworks differs

Most widely used PHP frameworks are open source and free. Hence, the web developers can take advantage of these web frameworks without increasing the project cost. But the community strength of individual frameworks differs. Hence, some PHP frameworks lack prompt and adequate support.

Lack of option to modify core behavior

In addition to proving a basic structure for web application development, the PHP frameworks further accelerate custom web application development. But the developers still lack any option to make changes to the core behavior of these frameworks. Some frameworks even requirements developers to use specific tools or adopt a particular web development pattern.

Affect Speed and performance of websites

Most PHP frameworks come with robust features and tools to accelerate development of large and complex websites. But web developers may not need these advanced features while building small or simple web applications. Also, these additional features often impact the performance and speed of websites adversely.