PHP terms
The engine behind the web's most-used server-side language
PHP powers an enormous portion of the web — from WordPress and Laravel to custom e-commerce platforms. This category covers the language internals, core functions, OOP features, type system, performance patterns, and PHP-specific quirks that every serious PHP developer should understand deeply. Whether you are writing procedural scripts or building full-stack applications with modern PHP 8.x features, these terms form the foundation.
More on PHP
History
PHP began in 1995 as a simple set of Perl scripts created by Rasmus Lerdorf to track visits to his personal website, evolving into a dedicated language called "Personal Home Page Tools." By version 3.0 (1997–1998), it became a fully-featured server-side scripting language adopted widely for web development, with PHP 4 (2000) introducing the Zend Engine and significantly improving performance and architecture. The object-oriented paradigm matured substantially in PHP 5 (2004), bringing proper class-based inheritance, interfaces, and exception handling, while PHP 7 (2015) delivered major performance gains and type declarations. Modern PHP (8.0+, released 2020 onwards) introduced named arguments, attributes, union types, match expressions, and later DNF types and fibers, reflecting maturation toward enterprise-grade systems while maintaining backward compatibility and its historical accessibility for rapid web development. Today, PHP powers over 75% of websites with known server-side technology, ranging from simple content management systems to complex frameworks like Laravel and Symfony.
Key concepts
- Constants (define vs const)
- Variables & Type Basics
- Arrays & Array Functions
- Functions & Closures
- Object-Oriented Programming Basics
- Exception Handling (try/catch/finally)
- Error Handling in PHP
- Composer & Dependency Management
Best references
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PHP Official Documentation The canonical reference for all PHP language features, functions, and standard library. Essential for accurate syntax, behavior, and version-specific changes across all 270 terms in this category.
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PHP RFC Archive Official Request for Comments documenting the design and rationale behind language features like attributes, enums, fibers, and type system enhancements. Invaluable for understanding why features were introduced and their historical context.
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Modern PHP by Josh Lockhart Seminal practical guide covering contemporary PHP patterns, best practices, and ecosystem tools like Composer. Bridges language features with real-world architectural patterns relevant to dependency injection and error handling.
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PHP-FIG Standards (PSR) Framework Interoperability Group specifications defining community standards for autoloading (PSR-4), coding style, interfaces, and more. Critical for understanding conventions around autoloaders, DI containers, and class organization.
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Composer Official Documentation Complete reference for dependency management, autoloading configuration, and composer scripts. Essential for understanding the modern PHP ecosystem and how Composer resolves the terms related to package management and autoloading.
✦ Latest in PHP
Typed relationships here
Edges touching a PHP term.
- OPcache Often seen in PHP-FPM Sep 16
- OPcache Realizes Opcode Caching Sep 16
- Readonly Classes (PHP 8.2) Applies Immutability Sep 14
- Constructor Property Promotion (PHP 8.0) Complements Readonly Properties (PHP 8.1) Sep 14
- Constructor Property Promotion (PHP 8.0) Complements Named Arguments (PHP 8.0) Sep 14
Streaming database result sets matters precisely because memory exhaustion is what triggers PHP's uncatchable OOM fatal error. By pulling rows one at a time instead of buffering the whole result, db_query_result_streaming keeps the process below memory_limit — the exact threshold whose breach produces php_oom_error. Without the memory_exhaustion link in the middle, streaming would just be a stylistic choice; with it, streaming becomes the concrete defense against a fatal error you can't even trap with set_error_handler().
A value object requires immutability — its whole equality-by-value contract depends on state never changing after construction. PHP's readonly classes are a language-level mechanism that applies exactly that immutability by making every declared property readonly, so the value object's defining guarantee is enforced by the compiler rather than by convention. Immutability is the shared property that carries the conceptual requirement from value_object down to the concrete PHP feature that implements it.
PHP's readonly classes connect to the problem of side effects by means of immutability: marking a class readonly enforces that its properties can't be mutated after construction, which is exactly the property immutability uses to mitigate side effects like argument mutation and shared-state changes. The readonly mechanism is the concrete language feature that realizes immutability, and immutability in turn is what carries the predictability guarantee back to the side-effects concern. Without immutability as the bridge, readonly_classes is just a PHP syntax detail with no inherent reason to relate to the general quality problem of side effects.
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Most referenced — PHP
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#[Override] Attribute (PHP 8.3) 3mime_content_type() 3str_contains / str_starts_with / str_ends_with 2Fibers — Cooperative Concurrency (PHP 8.1) 2Exception Handling Introduced (PHP 5) 2Global Function Style vs OOP Evolution 2PHP End-of-Life Schedule & Security Implications 2PHP Execution Model — Shared-Nothing Architecture 2
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PHP curl_multi
PHP 7.0+
4
curl_multi_* runs many HTTP requests in parallel from one PHP process, dramatically cutting total latency for I/O-bound work.
3mo ago
PHP advanced
Iterating Objects with foreach (Iterator & IteratorAggregate)
PHP 5.5+
3
foreach can traverse any object implementing Iterator or IteratorAggregate, not just arrays — control iteration without exposing internal state.
4mo ago
PHP intermediate
HTTP Cookies in PHP
PHP 7.3+
3
Cookies are small key-value pairs sent by the server via Set-Cookie and echoed back by the browser on every request — PHP sets them with setcookie() before any output, with Secure, HttpOnly, and SameSite flags controlling safety.
6mo ago
PHP beginner
MySQL charset=utf8mb4
PHP 5.1+
The correct MySQL character set for full Unicode support — including emoji and supplementary characters that the older utf8 charset cannot store.
7mo ago
PHP beginner
MySQL Connection Pooling
PHP 5.1+
1
Reusing database connections across requests instead of opening and closing a new connection on every request.
7mo ago
PHP intermediate
MySQL DSN (Data Source Name)
PHP 5.1+
The connection string passed to PDO specifying the database driver, host, port, database name, and charset.
7mo ago
PHP beginner
PDO Error Handling
PHP 5.1+
PDO has three error modes — silent, warning, and exception — controlling how database errors surface.
7mo ago
PHP beginner
PDO Fetch Modes
PHP 5.1+
Constants controlling how PDO returns rows — as arrays, objects, or custom classes.
7mo ago
PHP beginner
PDO lastInsertId()
PHP 5.1+
Returns the auto-increment ID generated by the most recent INSERT statement.
7mo ago
PHP beginner
PDO Named Placeholders
PHP 5.1+
Named parameters (:name) in prepared statements — more readable than positional ? placeholders for queries with multiple parameters.
7mo ago
PHP beginner
PDO query() vs prepare()
PHP 5.1+
PDO query() executes raw SQL immediately — prepare() parameterises it. query() must never include user-controlled values.
CWE-89 OWASP A3:2021
7mo ago
PHP beginner
9.8
PDO Transactions
PHP 5.1+
4
PDO wraps multiple queries in an atomic unit — either all succeed or all roll back.
7mo ago
PHP intermediate
PDO::ATTR_EMULATE_PREPARES
PHP 5.1+
Controls whether PDO sends real prepared statements to the database or emulates them client-side in PHP.
CWE-89 OWASP A3:2021
7mo ago
PHP intermediate
PDOStatement::bindParam() vs bindValue()
PHP 5.1+
Two PDO methods for binding variables to placeholders — bindParam() binds by reference (evaluated at execute), bindValue() binds by value (evaluated immediately).
7mo ago
PHP intermediate
PDOStatement::rowCount()
PHP 5.1+
Returns the number of rows affected by the last DELETE, INSERT, or UPDATE — unreliable for SELECT.
7mo ago
PHP beginner
PHP Generators
PHP 5.5+
1
Functions using yield that produce values lazily — one at a time — instead of building a complete array in memory.
7mo ago
PHP intermediate
PHP Fibers — Internals & Scheduler Patterns
PHP 8.1+
2
How PHP Fibers work under the hood — stack allocation, suspension mechanics, and how to build a cooperative multitasking scheduler on top of the Fiber API introduced in PHP 8.1.
7mo ago
PHP advanced
#[Override] Attribute (PHP 8.3)
PHP 8.3+
The #[Override] attribute tells PHP (and static analysers) that a method is intentionally overriding a parent class or interface method — if no such method exists in a parent, PHP throws an error at class load time.
7mo ago
PHP intermediate
Abstract readonly Properties
PHP 8.4+
PHP 8.4 allows abstract readonly properties in abstract classes and interfaces — defining that implementations must provide a readonly property of a specific type.
7mo ago
PHP advanced
Anonymous Functions / Closures (PHP 5.3)
PHP 5.3+
1
PHP 5.3 introduced anonymous functions (closures) — function() {} expressions assignable to variables, passable as callbacks, and able to capture outer scope with use().
7mo ago
PHP intermediate