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

As we discussed [earlier](https://www.educative.io/courses/learn-php/variables-and-data-types), an array is like a list of values. The simplest form of an array is indexed by an integer, and ordered by the index, with the first element lying at index 0.

To debug your code while working with arrays, it is very important to view the keys and their associated values. Accessing the length of an array can also be useful on numerous occasions.   
# Outputting a Structured View of Arrays

To print an array in a readable format we use the following: 
```php
print_r($arrayName)
``` 
This will print the keys and their associated values. Run the code below to see how `print_r()` works.


<?php
$fruits = array("Type"=>"Citrus",1=>"Orange",2=>"Grapefruit",3=>"Lemon");//initializing associative array
print_r($fruits);
?>

For detailed information about arrays, take a look at the following example.

This will print keys, their associated values’ data type (and length in parenthesis) and the value itself. Run the code below to see how `var_dump()` works.


<?php
$fruits = array("Type"=>"Citrus",1=>"Orange",2=>"Grapefruit",3=>"Lemon");//initializing associative array
var_dump($fruits);
?>

>Trying to output an array with an ``echo`` will simply print the data type instead.

<?php
$fruits = array("Type"=>"Citrus",1=>"Orange",2=>"Grapefruit",3=>"Lemon");//initializing associative array
echo $fruits;
?>

# Length of an Array

The *total number* of elements in an array is called the length of an array. This length is dynamic and can be changed over time. We can check the length of an array using an inbuilt function count with the following syntax: 
```php
count($arrayName);

<?php
$fruits = array("Type"=>"Citrus",1=>"Orange",2=>"Grapefruit",3=>"Lemon");//initializing associative array
echo "Length of \$fruits is ".count($fruits);
?>

In this lesson. we will learn about printing arrays and finding length of an array.

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

Arrays and their Operations

Outputting a Structured View of Arrays #

Length of an Array #