PHP is a widely used server-side scripting language for business applications and web development. One of the most extensively used languages for building interactive websites and web applications is PHP, thanks to its open-source libraries and reliable performance.
While PHP focuses primarily on web development, it can serve other use cases. For this reason, PHP developers are in high demand in the market. This article explores PHP’s advanced capabilities and usage in different practical applications. Keep reading to get an idea about the various PHP use cases that exist to build your project.
Practical Applications of PHP You Should Know
PHP, one of the most popular and oldest programming languages, is mainly a scripting language. Being a fast and reliable scripting language, many of the largest tech organizations, including Facebook, Google, and Wikipedia, put their trust in this programming language. The following list illustrates a few incredible things you can do with PHP.
The Backend of Your Web Server
Although PHP is frequently used to power websites, Windows, macOS, and Linux workstations also use it frequently. Installing Docker and then running a container that includes PHP is the quickest and easiest way to run PHP. With PHP, MySQL, and NGINX, your server would only need a couple of hours to be up and running.
Website’s Security
Using PHP appropriately, you can effortlessly incorporate essential cybersecurity measures into your website. By using PHP libraries for encryption and hashing, you can protect the passwords stored on your server. Hence, using PHP and cybersecurity tools concurrently to thwart ongoing, frequent cyberattacks is a wise strategy.
Cloud Integration
Undoubtedly, the cloud is the next significant advancement in the IT sector. It has aided in simplifying the workflow at the enterprise level. PHP provides a fantastic facility for integrating cloud technology into your web server. Among other benefits, professional advantages are the main reason most businesses choose PHP for integrating cloud technology into their web server.
Image Processing
PHP serves a variety of purposes which includes image manipulation processing. A wide range of image processing features, such as rotating, cropping, reformatting, adding watermarks, creating thumbnail images, and producing output images in various formats, can be enabled with PHP applications.
All you have to do is integrate libraries like Imagine, GD library, and ImageMagick. It supports multiple image output formats, including jpeg, gif, wbmp, xpm, and png. For building versatile web applications, this is a vital element.
Data Representation
By employing tools like Image Graph, PHP can generate different types of data representations, including charts, graphs, and scatter plots. This feature is essential for creating graphical interfaces, desktop applications, client-side e-commerce websites, and other applications where data needs to be visually precise.
Generating PDF Files
Another significant PHP application is the creation of PDF files. A built-in library tool called PDFlib can help PHP programmers to create and edit PDF files. This feature facilitates the development of an online billing system that allows the creation of HTML-driven PDF invoices.
CMS System
Businesses must employ a content management systems (CMS) solution for running their business online. PHP supports several databases, including Oracle, MySQL, and Microsoft Access. Many PHP frameworks provide templates and libraries that allow developers to control and modify a website’s content.
The best PHP-managed web content management systems (CMS) include WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla, which also support versatile plugins for added functionality to websites. Solutions built on PHP, such as WordPress, make content creation and updating very easy. Businesses can streamline and organize their content production-related works in just a few clicks using this platform.
PHP For Web Scraping
Although PHP isn’t the most used tool for web scraping, it’s incredibly fast and reliable. The entry-level cost is extremely low and is adequate for most crawling and scraping applications. To get started, you merely require a PHP server, which is available from almost any shared web hosting company. Next, follow this PHP web scraping tutorial to begin your web scraping journey today.
Final Thoughts
PHP’s flexibility and versatility are its most convenient features. It is very convenient to work with PHP because it is almost identical to an object-oriented language. Moreover, it is unquestionably critical that Microsoft and Apple provide robust support for PHP as part of their integrated development environments (IDEs), including Visual Studio and Xcode, making it easy for developers to start building projects without much hassle.
