Summary
In this chapter, we've had a taste of the PHP server-side scriptinglanguage by exploring all the basic language features: statements, variables,
operators, and control structures. The sample applications we've seen have
been reasonably simple, but don't let that dissuade you. The real power of
PHP is in the hundreds of built-in functions that let you access data in a
MySQL database, send email, dynamically generate images, and even create Adobe
Acrobat PDF files on the fly.In "Publishing MySQL Data on the Web", we'll delve into the
MySQL functions in PHP, to show how to publish the joke database that we created
in "Getting Started with MySQL" on the Web. This chapter will
set the scene for the ultimate goal of this book—creating a complete
content management system for your Website in PHP and MySQL.