PHP, PHP Source Code File (.php)

The PHP Website file format

PHP is known as a server-side scripting language. It is used in web development as well as a general-purpose programming language. It was created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994 and is nowadays installed in over 240 million websites. Files with the PHP extension represent web pages that contain code in the aforementioned programming language.

Technical details of PHP files

PHP files can contain code that is used to execute different online processes. The PHP engine on a web server parses the PHP code contained in the file and dynamically generates HTML code from it. This is what the user actually sees when visiting a webpage, thus the underlying PHP code and file are not visible for the user.

More information about the PHP file format

File extension .php
File category Website
Example file Download example.php file (2.58 KiB)
Associated programs Adobe Dreamweaver CC 2015
Eclipse PHP Development Tools
Zend Studio
MPSoftware phpDesigner
ES-Computing EditPlus
Blumentals WeBuilder
Notepad++
WampServer
Web browsers
Useful links Learn more about PHP files
Developer The PHP group