Complete Guide to Native PHP

History of PHP

• PHP was created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994.
• PHP originally stood for:
• Personal Home Page

Now it stands for:

PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor

PHP is:

• Open-source
• Server-side scripting language
• Mainly used for web development

Popular platforms built using PHP:

• WordPress
• Facebook (early versions)
• Wikipedia

Why Use Native PHP?

Advantages

1. Full Control

• File structure
• Logic flow
• Security handling
• Performance optimization

Lightweight

1. No heavy framework files.
2. Faster for small applications.

Better Understanding

1. Understand backend logic
2. Learn how frameworks work internally

No Framework Dependency

1. Framework updates
2. Breaking changes
3. Package conflicts

Security in Native PHP

Prevent SQL Injection

Use prepared statements:

• $stmt = $pdo->prepare(“SELECT * FROM users WHERE email = ?”);
• $stmt->execute([$email]);

Prevent XSS

• echo htmlspecialchars($user_input);

Password Hashing

• $password = password_hash($password, PASSWORD_DEFAULT);

Verify:

• password_verify($input_password, $hashed_password);

Session Handling

Start session:

session_start();

$_SESSION[‘user’] = $username;

Destroy session:

session_destroy();

Used for:

• Login systems
• Shopping carts
• User authentication

MVC in Native PHP (Manual Implementation)

Even without frameworks, you can build:

• Model → Database logic
• View → HTML
• Controller → Business logic

This improves:

• Code organization
• Scalability
• Maintenance

When to Use Native PHP

Use Native PHP when:

• Small websites
• Learning backend
• Custom lightweight apps
• No complex architecture needed

Avoid when:

• Large enterprise systems
• Large teams
• Complex APIs

Best Practices for Native PHP

• Use PDO instead of MySQLi
• Always validate inputs
• Use prepared statements
• Separate logic from HTML
• Use proper folder structure
• Enable error reporting in development
• Disable error display in production