How to begin web programming with PHP

I am often asked, 'how to begin web programming with PHP?'. Following is a response that I had given few weeks ago. Hope this will be useful for anyone willing to start learning PHP.

Things you need to know to begin web programming with PHP:

• Good knowledge of HTML
• Some knowledge of CSS
• Some knowledge of JavaScript
• Good knowledge of MySQL Database, SQL (as most php applications are database driven)
• Good knowledge of PHP
• Using and configuring Apache

Tutorial Links:

Here are the links to tutorials that may help you to accelerate your learning process.

• HTML:
• Very good short tutorial: http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_intro.asp
• Good tutorial: http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/
• Advanced tutorial: http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/Advanced.html
• CSS:
• Very good short tutorial: http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_intro.asp
• A good tutorial: http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/011/firstcss
• A detailed tutorial: http://www.html.net/tutorials/css/
• JavaScript:
• Very good short tutorial on JavaScript: http://www.w3schools.com/js/js_intro.asp
• Detailed tutorial: http://www.webdeveloper.com/javascript/javascript_js_tutorial.html
• PHP:
• Very good short tutorial on PHP: http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_intro.asp
• Very good detailed tutorial on PHP: http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/627 (go through all the parts)

Recommended Setup:

• Wamp Server (http://www.wampserver.com/en/download.php) which includes Apache web server, PHP and MySQL.
• Editor: Notepad++ (http://notepad-plus-plus.org/download).
• HTML Editor: DreamWeaver, FrontPage.
• References (must have): php manual.chm, mysql manual.chm, javascript referenece books.

Recommendations:

• Keep the references handy/near to you.
• Search in Google for more tutorials
• Look into well known PHP frameworks (search for: top php frameworks).
  
• Look into open source projects to learn how real life applications are done.
• Practice well :)

Online (Comprehensive) English to Bengali Dictionary

Last week I was looking for a web based dictionary in the web. I found two sites with very poor collection of the word translation. (Details mentioned end of the article). At once I decided to give one whole night a try and create my own online dictionary. And guess what? I did.

How: After some googling, I got two good Unicode based dictionary databases. But none of them translate from English to Bengali. They were Bengali to English and Bengali to Bengali. Hmm.. they don't seem to be much useful, do they?

This is what I did: created my db schema, wrote a php code to parse and enter the entries of two dictionaries into one db table without any duplicates (Bengali and English translations strings into separate fields), wrote another php code to parse the English translation strings and do 'word indexing' and store indexes into another table. Then I created a search page. That's all, I'm done.

The search page searches in the indexed words, prioritize and sort them by their original positions in the translation strings and also categories the results. Works like a charm.

Try it now: www.ittefaq.com/dict.

I'll work on the application some more soon and will make a release. And yes, I do need to check the License types of the data sources :).

The other online dictionaries:

• www.virtualbangladesh.com/dictionary.php
• www.bangladict.org

These dictionaries are good starts but look dummy and not really useful.

I may make my dictionary open source soon.

Happy translating!