PHP is a server-side scripting language designed for web development but also used as a general-purpose programming language. Originally created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994, the PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group. PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page, but it now stands for the recursive acronymPHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.
PHP code may be embedded into HTML code, or it can be used in combination with various web template systems, web content management systems and web frameworks. PHP code is usually processed by a PHP interpreter implemented as a module in the web server or as a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) executable. The web server combines the results of the interpreted and executed PHP code, which may be any type of data, including images, with the generated web page. PHP code may also be executed with a command-line interface (CLI) and can be used to implement standalone graphical applications.
The standard PHP interpreter, powered by the Zend Engine, is free software released under the PHP License. PHP has been widely ported and can be deployed on most web servers on almost every operating system and platform, free of charge.
The PHP language evolved without a written formal specification or standard until 2014, leaving the canonical PHP interpreter as a de facto standard. Since 2014 work has gone on to create a formal PHP specification.
During the 2010s there have been increased efforts towards standardisation and code sharing in PHP applications by projects such as PHP-FIG in the form of PSR-initiatives as well as Composer dependency manager and the Packagist repository.
PHP is an open-source server-side scripting language.
PHP may also refer to:
- Parallel History Project, a website with information about the Cold War
- Parkdale—High Park, an electoral district in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- Partial hospitalization program, a program used to treat mental illness and substance abuse
- Penultimate hop popping, a function of certain routers in MPLS computer networks
- Percutaneous hepatic perfusion, a regionalized cancer treatment
- Philippine peso, ISO 4217 currency code of the official currency of the Philippines
- PHP pistol, a Croatian made pistol
- Pigeonhole principle, also known as Dirichlet's box (or drawer) principle
- Pizza Hut Park, former name of Toyota Stadium in Dallas, Texas
- Primary Health Properties, a UK real estate investment trust
- Project Honey Pot, a system to block email harvesters
- Pseudohypoparathyroidism, a condition associated primarily with resistance to the parathyroid hormone