PHP
| PHP | |
|---|---|
| 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 | 8.4.12[3]
/ 28 August 2025 |
| Typing discipline | Dynamic, weak, gradual[4] |
| Implementation language | C (primarily; some components in C++) |
| OS | Unix-like, Windows, macOS, IBM i, OpenVMS, IBM Z |
| License | PHP License[a] |
| Filename extensions | .php,.phar,.phtml,.pht,.phps |
| Website | php.net |
| 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 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 backronym PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.[14]
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 (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, 13.2% of PHP websites use the even more outdated (discontinued for 5+ years) and insecure PHP 5, and the no longer supported PHP 8.0 is also very popular, so the majority of PHP websites do not use supported versions.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Lerdorf-1995was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ a b Lerdorf, Rasmus (26 April 2017). "PHP on Hormones – history of PHP presentation by Rasmus Lerdorf given at the MySQL Conference in Santa Clara, California". The Conversations Network. Archived from the original on 29 July 2013. Retrieved 22 June 2009.
- ^ "Version 8.4.12". 28 August 2025. Retrieved 29 August 2025.
- ^ "PHP: Function arguments – Manual".
- ^ "PHP: Release Archives (museum)".
- ^ "PHP: Preface – Manual".
- ^ Stogov, Dmitry [@dstogov] (4 December 2015). "It's not a secret that some #PHP7 optimization ideas came from HHVM, LuaJIT and V8. Thank you @HipHopVM @SaraMG. #php7thankyou" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
- ^ "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor". Retrieved 12 February 2020.
- ^ Krill, Paul (18 November 2013). "Believe the hype: PHP founder backs Facebook's HipHop technology". InfoWorld. Retrieved 13 October 2022.
- ^ "Announce: Personal Home Page Tools (PHP Tools)". Retrieved 3 November 2022.
- ^ "History of PHP and related projects". The PHP Group. Retrieved 25 February 2008.
- ^ "History of PHP". php.net.
- ^ Olsson, Mikael (4 September 2013). PHP Quick Scripting Reference. Apress. ISBN 978-1-4302-6284-8.
- ^ PHP Manual: Preface, PHP.
- ^ "Introduction: What can PHP do?". PHP Manual. Archived from the original on 16 February 2009. Retrieved 5 March 2009.
- ^ "Helicopter: Port of node-ar-drone which allows user to control a Parrot AR Drone over PHP". JoliCode. 11 January 2019. Retrieved 23 February 2019.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
O'Reilly-2001was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ "PHP: Unsupported Branches".
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
W3Techs – World Wide Web Technology Surveyswas invoked but never defined (see the help page).
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