What is PHP?

PHP is a general-purpose scripting language commonly used on web servers. A PHP program can build a response from request data, application logic, and a database. How a PHP page reaches a browser 1. A browser requests a URL from a web server. 2. The web server passes the PHP file to the PHP runtime. 3. PHP runs on the server and produces a response, often HTML or JSON. 4. The server sends that response to the browser. The browser does not receive the PHP source code. PHP can also power command-line tools, scheduled jobs, and APIs. A useful distinction is that PHP is the language and runtime; a framework such as Laravel is an optional toolkit built with PHP. Try it Save a file ending in .php, run it through a PHP-enabled server, and compare the page source in your browser with the PHP file on disk. Further guidance For every setup lesson, verify which PHP version and extensions are active in the same environment that runs the project. Keep a small reproducible script, use the command-line version output to diagnose configuration problems, and distinguish local development tools from production services. Practice task: Create a fresh example for What is PHP?. Predict the result before running it, then change one input and explain why the result changes. Test a normal case and one boundary or invalid case where it applies. Compare your output with the example and note one rule you would use in a real project.