PHP102

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Main Page >> Web Application Development >> Workbook >> A Basic Page

Exercise 2 - First VALID PHP/HTML page

1. Open your preferred editor

2. Code the following exactly - DO NOT CUT AND PASTE - you will not learn by just pasting this. 

<!DOCTYPE html>
 <html lang="en">
   <head>
     <meta charset="UTF-8">
     <title>My First Valid HTML/PHP page</title>
   </head>
   <body>
     <?php
       $myname = "Alix";
       echo "Hello - I am ".$myname;
     ?>
   </body>
 </html>

3. Save this in your public_html folder as "exercise2.php"

4. Open your preferred browser and point it to http://mi-linux.wlv.ac.uk/~YOURSTUDENTNUMBER/exercise2.php

5. The result should look like the following screenshot.

PHP102-01.png

Understanding Exercise 2

As you can see, you can combine HTML and PHP commands in one file, but the file must have a .php extension for it to be handled correctly by the webserver

  • The first line contains the DOCTYPE or DTD - see HTML teaching notes for details on this if you're not sure
  • <html lang="en">
    • this is the start of the HTML file with the language attribute set to English - this is used by some validators
  • <head>
    • this is the start of the heading section of the webpage, where components such as title, meta tags, and style are defined
  • <meta...>
    • this line is used by some validators to understand the character set the page has been written in - more information can be found on W3C Validator-Character encoding FAQ or more general information on troubleshooting W3 validator responses can be found at W3C Validator FAQ
  • <title...>
    • this sets the title of the browser window that the page appears in - a common mistake is to believe this prints out somewhere in the body of a webpage - it does not - look at your window title bar and taskbar for evidence of where this appears
  • </head>
    • the end of the heading section
  • <body>
    • the start of the body of the webpage - the visible output shown in a page
  • <?php
    • these symbol indicates the start of PHP content in your page - everything from this point on is executed by the PHP program
  • $myname = "Alix";
    • this creates a variable called "myname" and puts "Alix" into it.
  • echo "Hello - I am ".$myname;
    • this prints out the sentence "Hello - I am " and adds the content of the "myname" variable to the end of the sentence
  • ?>
    • these symbols indicate the end of the PHP code
  • </body>
    • this indicates the end of the body section of the webpage
  • </html>
    • this indicates the end of the html/php page

Reuse this page as a template

To save retyping, you should consider copying and pasting this page for your exercises and your assessment - this is a valid framework that you can paste your PHP code into - make sure that any PHP exists between the <?php and ?> symbols

Do you understand everything you've done on this page?

If so, take a look at PHP103 - PHP Basics

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