PHP

This article is about the scripting language. For other uses, see PHP (disambiguation).
PHP
ParadigmMulti-paradigm: imperative, functional, object-oriented, procedural, reflective
Designed byRasmus Lerdorf
DeveloperThe PHP Development Team, Zend Technologies, PHP Foundation
First appeared8 June 1995; 29 years ago (1995-06-08)[1][2]
Stable release
8.4.1 / 21 November 2024; 0 days ago (2024-11-21)[3]
Typing disciplineDynamic, weak, gradual[4]
Implementation languageC (primarily; some components C++)
OSUnix-like, Windows, macOS, IBM i, OpenVMS, IBM Z
LicensePHP 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
Websitewww.php.net Edit this at Wikidata
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 acronym 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 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. Meaning the vast majority do not use the supported versions.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Lerdorf-1995 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ a b Lerdorf, Rasmus (2007-04-26). "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 2013-07-29.
  3. ^ "PHP: PHP 8.4.0 Release Announcement". www.php.net. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help); Text "https://www.php.net/releases/8.4/index.php" ignored (help)
  4. ^ "PHP: Function arguments – Manual". secure.php.net.
  5. ^ "PHP: Release Archives (museum)". museum.php.net.
  6. ^ "PHP: Preface – Manual".
  7. ^ Stogov, Dmitry [@dstogov] (2015-12-04). "It's not a secret that some #PHP7 optimization ideas came from HHVM, LuaJIT and V8. Thank you @HipHopVM @SaraMG. #php7thankyou" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  8. ^ "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor". www.php.net. Retrieved 2020-02-12.
  9. ^ Krill, Paul (2013-11-18). "Believe the hype: PHP founder backs Facebook's HipHop technology". InfoWorld. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  10. ^ "Announce: Personal Home Page Tools (PHP Tools)". groups.google.com. Retrieved 2022-11-03.
  11. ^ "History of PHP and related projects". The PHP Group. Retrieved 2008-02-25.
  12. ^ "History of PHP". php.net.
  13. ^ Olsson, Mikael (2013-09-04). PHP Quick Scripting Reference. Apress. ISBN 978-1-4302-6284-8.
  14. ^ PHP Manual: Preface, www.php.net.
  15. ^ "Introduction: What can PHP do?". PHP Manual. Retrieved 2009-03-05.
  16. ^ helicopter: Port of node-ar-drone which allows user to control a Parrot AR Drone over PHP: jolicode/php-ar-drone, JoliCode, 2019-01-11, retrieved 2019-02-23
  17. ^ Cite error: The named reference O'Reilly-2001 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  18. ^ "PHP: Unsupported Branches". www.php.net.
  19. ^ Cite error: The named reference W3Techs – World Wide Web Technology Surveys was invoked but never defined (see the help page).