Learn PHP basics with hands-on practice in hello world in PHP, variables in PHP, functions in PHP, arrays in PHP, PHP inheritance, PHP exceptions, and more.

This interactive course introduces you to the fundamentals of PHP programming, one of the most widely used languages in web development. Starting with a simple hello world in PHP, you’ll explore the basics, including PHP output, variables in PHP, and PHP data types. You’ll also learn about PHP constants, arithmetic operators, comparison operators, logical operators, and assignment operators.

The course progresses into conditional statements in PHP, PHP switch, and various loops such as PHP for loop, PHP while loop, and more. You will then dive deeper into functions in PHP, understand PHP variable scope, and learn PHP pass by reference or value. Additionally, you’ll gain a working knowledge of strings in PHP, PHP string operations, and handling arrays in PHP, including PHP multidimensional arrays.

In the advanced sections, you’ll explore classes in PHP, inheritance, constructors, and destructors, handling PHP exceptions with PHP throw and catch exceptions.

Learn PHP

# Syntax for Defining Classes
We define our own class by starting with the keyword `class` followed by the *name* you want to give to your new class.



Here's the general syntax:

class className{
  //properties and methods defined
}

# Example Snippet 

Here's an example snippet of a class named `Shape`.

<?php
class Shape{
  public $sides = 0; // first property
  public $name= " "; // second property 
  
  public function description(){ //first method
    echo "A $this->name with $this->sides sides.";
  }
}
?>

## Explanation

The class `Shape` has the *properties*:

* `sides`
* `name`

and the *method*:
* `description`

You might have noticed the use of the *keyword* `public` before defining both the *method* and the *properties*. We will be discussing this in detail in an [upcoming lesson](https://www.educative.io/courses/learn-php/method-and-property-visibility) so for now, you can just focus on the general way of defining a class. 

You can also ignore the body of the *method* `description` for now as all of this will be discussed in the next lesson.



In this lesson, we will be learning about classes and how to define them.

PHP Basics

PHP Variables

PHP Operators

PHP Conditional Statements

PHP Loops

PHP Functions

PHP Strings

PHP Arrays

PHP Assessment 1

PHP Classes

Exception Handling in PHP

PHP Assessment 2

Defining Classes

Syntax for Defining Classes #

Example Snippet