PHP for the Novice Programmer

By: Albert Ritzhaupt

Purpose: This interactive e-book was developed to serve as a free instructional resource for students in my fully online Introduction to the Internet course that I have for the University of North Florida since 2005, and to serve the aspiring Information Technology (IT) student as a resource to learn about and how to use PHP. My hope is that this resource will be invaluable to the IT community, and help learning what I consider to be one of the best server-side scripting languages.

About the Author: Albert Ritzhaupt, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Instructional Technology at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. His previous appoint was at the University of North Florida where he developed this resource while completing his doctoral work at the University of South Florida.

Target Audience: This e-book was developed for the aspiring Information Technology learner with little to programming experience. This e-book does assume that the learner has a strong understanding of the fundamentals of the Web, Hyper-Text Markup Language (HTML) experience, and basic experience with the concept of a database. 

Content Description: This e-book contains basic PHP programming information ranging from control structures to database access and processing. The online book includes: Introduction; Sequence; Selection; Repetition; Functions; Arrays; File I/O; and MySQL.

Instructional Approach: The e-book is organized so that the learner can easily skip sections and go to chapters that directly relate to their current skill set. The content found within the chapters briefly describes and summarizes material and provides solid see-and-do examples (scaffolds) for the learner to follow along. Each chapter includes one or more practice exercises, an online self-regulated assessment, and an activity.  The chapters include interactive examples. The activities can be completed independently or be used as deliverables to meet course requirements.

Software Requirements: The online book assumes that learners have access to a PHP 4.0/MySQL enabled server that is properly configured.  Additionally, the learner needs access to a text editor or an IDE that is suitable for PHP development.