This article will explain what the phpinfo() function does and how to use it to get information about the PHP environment on your system. Many PHP packages and platforms (like WordPress, Laravel, and Symfony) have system requirements beyond what is included in the base PHP installation on most systems. These required modules include things like support for encryption, database support, and the ability to make HTTP requests from within PHP. To ensure that your PHP environment meets these conditions before trying to run the software, you … Read more

This article will explain how to merge arrays using the PHP array_merge function and provide some code examples. What is an Array? An array is a type of PHP variable that can hold other values, or references to other variables, in a list at a certain position. Arrays are really useful – allowing you to store a list of variables or values of any length in a single variable – ready to be iterated over, printed as the rows in a table, or otherwise processed. Arrays might … Read more

The PHP cURL library adds support for requesting and submitting data over HTTP connections. This article will show you how to use it. There are a plethora of useful online services you can pull data from. From mapping to currency conversion, weather, flight schedules, language translations (in fact, just look at a big list of them here), these services, called APIs (Application Programming Interface), allow you to interact with massive databases of information over the HTTP protocol. PHP includes the tools to do this in its … Read more

This article will explain how to use the PHP number_format() function, with some helpful examples. Different regions use different number formatting – Some countries, including the UK, USA, Australia, and New Zealand, use a comma (,) to separate thousands when writing large numbers and use a period (.) as a decimal separator. Your computer most likely uses the same formatting when storing number values in a database. However, some countries, like Germany, use a period as the thousands separator and a comma as the decimal separator. Others … Read more

Here’s a short article on a useful PHP feature – the unset construct allows you to destroy a variable, making it unavailable for use. There are a few reasons why you might want to unset a variable: Making sure you don’t accidentally use a variable you don’t want to use in a certain context or scope Cleaning up variables after a loop Make a global variable unavailable within a function or scope Remove an element from an Array Remove an object attribute Read on to see how it’s done. … Read more