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Intermediate PHP
With roughly 80% of all websites using PHP, it's a strong technology for starting a web development career.
By the end of this Track, you’ll have the skills needed to create dynamic content by storing and retrieving data through the use of databases and files including CSV, XML and JSON.
As a prerequisite for this Track, we recommend our Beginning PHP Track.
To start, we'll cover some SQL fundamentals with our SQL Basics course and Reporting with SQL course. This will lay the groundwork for using PHP to interact with databases. Next, we'll learn the $_GET and $_POST commands and how to use them to work with data more efficiently in PHP.
The next part of the Track is our 4-hour course on Integrating PHP with Databases. We'll refactor a personal media library application by replacing an associative array with a database to provide a better method of data storage.
Following that, we'll learn about data persistence and three ways to persist data in a browser: Forms, Sessions and Cookies. Finally, we'll dive into CRUD operations and file handling with PHP.
Treehouse is the premier place to learn PHP. Come continue your journey with us!
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An entry-level salary for the technologies covered in this track is about $60,000 / yr on average.
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Some companies that use these technologies regularly include: Google, Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr, LinkedIn, WordPress, Digg, Intel, Pinterest, and Twitter
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SQL Basics
In SQL Basics, we’ll take a look at what databases are and how you can retrieve information from them. Databases can store massive amounts of information to be retrieved at a later date. Databases act as the memory for dynamic web sites or mobile apps.
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Reporting with SQL
SQL can be used to generate reports and present information on websites. This course covers powerful SQL features in helping you answer more interesting questions about your data.
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Working with $_GET and $_POST in PHP
This course will show you how to work with PHP Superglobals such as $GET and $POST while using a security-conscious mindset. External inputs, like HTML forms, are considered a security vulnerability so you should always filter inputs and escape outputs. Using PHP Superglobals when using external inputs such as HTML forms, cookies, sessions, and web servers will give you a security-conscious mindset that you can apply to all of your projects.
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Integrating PHP with Databases
Building a PHP-driven page is the first step in mastering PHP. The true power of PHP shines when you connect it to a data source like an API or a Database. To introduce you to databases, we'll use an example project -- a Personal Media Library application. We'll refactor this project by replacing an associative array with a database to provide a more robust and scalable tool to store the data in the media library. In the process, you'll learn how to use PDO -- a PHP extension to communicate with a database. You'll also learn about relational databases including how to search for data across multiple tables, as well as how to add common web site features like search forms and pagination.
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Browser Persistent Data with PHP
With smartphones, smartwatches and even smart appliances, the internet of things has brought us into a world to rival sci-fi novels. We're no longer content with a simple search. We want context. We expect our devices to know our locations, preferences, desires and goals. We expect tailored suggestions, reminders and announcements. Most of the time we don't even realize how much our devices or websites are setup to assist us until our connection is broken or we try to use a different device, and all of a sudden our history and setting aren't there and it's so much harder to do or find anything. Users have come to expect so much and it's just getting worse. So what does that mean to you as a programmer? How can you make your own applications "user aware"? It starts with data persistence.
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Modifying Data with SQL
At the heart of a dynamic application is a database. Whether the application is an eCommerce, sports team, social network, or productivity app on your phone, the data needs to change over time. In this course, we'll take a look at the underpinning SQL statements that are needed for every dynamic application.
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CRUD Operations with PHP
In this course we'll delve into the full spectrum of database interactions. Whether the application is an e-commerce, or social network site, or even a todo app on your phone, the data needs to change over time. CRUD is an acronym that refers to the four main operations that you'd want to perform on data in a database: Create, Read, Update, Delete.
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File Handling with PHP
PHP can do so much more than include files. In this course we'll explore reading and writing files from a directory. We'll also take advantage of built-in parsing functions for working with common file formats to read and write CSV, XML and JSON data.
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Track Completion
This course includes:
- SQL Basics 2 hours
- Reporting with SQL 2 hours
- Working with $_GET and $_POST in PHP 44 min
- Integrating PHP with Databases 4 hours
- Browser Persistent Data with PHP 49 min
- Modifying Data with SQL 79 min
- CRUD Operations with PHP 2 hours
- File Handling with PHP 101 min