Section 1. Getting Started with PHP

• What is PHP – quickly introduce you to PHP and its ecosystem.
• Install PHP – learn how to install a PHP development environment locally on your computer.
• Hello, World – walk you through the steps of writing and running the first PHP script.

Section 2. PHP Fundamentals

• Syntax – introduce you to the basic PHP syntax, including sensitivity, statements, whitespace, and linebreak.
• Variables – show you how to use variables to store data in PHP.
• Constants – define constants that hold a value that doesn’t change throughout the script.
• Comments – learn how to document your code effectively using comments.
• var_dump – learn how to dump the information about a variable.

Section 3. PHP Types

• Data types – give you a quick overview of PHP types, including scalar types, compound types, and special types.
• Boolean – learn how to represent a truth value using the boolean type.
• Integer – explain to you how to work with integers in PHP.
• Float – guide you on how to represent floating-point numbers.
• String – learn about various forms of strings in PHP, including single-quoted and double-quoted strings.
• Null – introduce to you the NULL type and how to check if a variable is NULL or not.
• Type Casting – learn how to cast a value of one type to another.
• Type Juggling – explain to you how the type juggling works in PHP.

Section 4. Operators

This section covers the most commonly used operators in PHP including logical and comparison operators.

• Assignment operators – learn about the most commonly used assignment operators effectively.
• Comparison operators – introduce to you the comparison operators that allow you to compare two values of the same or different types.
• Logical AND operator (&&) – show you how to use the logical AND operator to build complex logical expressions.
• Logical OR operator (||) – learn how to use the logical OR operator to form complex logical expressions.
• Logical NOT operator (!) – learn how to negate a Boolean expression.
• Operators – explain to you the available operators in PHP and help you apply them effectively.

Section 5. Control flow

• if – learn how to execute a code block based on a condition.
• if-else – show you how to run a code block if a condition is true and another code block if the condition is false.
• if-elseif – show you how to execute the corresponding code block based on multiple conditions.
• Ternary operator – guide you on using the ternary operator to make your code shorter and more readable.
• switch – learn how to use the switch statement effectively.
• for – execute a code block a fixed number of times.
• while – explain to you how to run a pretest loop.
• do-while – understand the posttest loop and learn when to use it in the script.
• break – learn how to break out of a loop.
• continue – show you how to skip the current loop iteration and start the new one from the beginning.

Section 6. Functions

• Functions – show you how to define user-defined functions.
• Function parameters – learn about function parameters, passing arguments by value and by reference.
• Default parameters – show you how to set a default value for a parameter.
• Named arguments – explain to you the named arguments that allow you to pass arguments to a function using the parameter names rather than parameter positions.
• Variable scopes – learn about the variable scopes, including global, local, static, and function parameters.
• Type hints – show you how to declare types for function parameters and return value.
• Strict typing – learn how to enable strict mode using the strict typing directive.
• Variadic functions – learn how to define function that accepts a variable number of arguments.

Section 7. Array

• Arrays – show you how to handle a list of items effectively with Array data type.
• Associative Arrays – learn how to use the associative arrays to reference elements by names rather than numbers.
• foreach – show you how to use the foreach statement to iterate over elements of an index array or an associative array.
• Multidimensional Array – guide you on how to define a multidimensional array and manipulate its elements effectively.
• array_unshift() – add one or more elements to the beginning of an array.
• array_push() – add one or more elements to the end of an array.
• array_pop() – remove an element from the end of an array and return it.
• array_shift() – remove an element from the beginning of an array and return it.
• array_keys() – get the keys of an array.
• array_key_exists() – check if a key exists in an array.
• in_array() – check if a value exists in an array.
• array_reverse() – reverse the order of elements in an array.
• array_merge() – merge multiple arrays into one.
• Spread operator – show you how to use the spread operator with an array expression.
• list – learn how to use the list construct to assign the array elements to multiple variables in a single operation.
• Array destructuring – show you how to unpack array elements to multiple variables.

Section 8. Sorting Arrays

This section introduces to you various helpful functions to sort elements of an array.

• sort – sort values of an array in the ascending order (or use the rsort() function to sort the values of an array in the descending order).
• ksort() – sort array keys of an associative array.
• usort() – sort an array with a user-defined function.
• asort() – sort an associative array and maintain the index association.
• uasort() – sort an associative array with a user-defined comparison function and maintains the index association.
• uksort() – sort the keys of an array with a user-defined comparison function.

Section 9. Advanced Functions

• Anonymous functions – learn how to use anonymous functions effectively.
• Arrow functions – show you how to use the arrow functions for writing short anonymous functions.
• Variable functions – guide you on how to call a function dynamically via a variable.

Section 10. Variable constructs

• isset – return true if a variable is set and not null.
• empty – returns true if a variable does not exist or is false.
• is_null – returns true if a variable does not exist or is null.

Section 11. Advanced Array Operations

• Map – map array elements using the array_map() function.
• Filter – filter the elements of an array by a callback using the array_filter() function.
• Reduce – reduce an array to a single value by a callback function using the array_reduce() funtion.

Section 12. Organizing PHP files

• Include – show you how to use the include construct to make PHP script files more organized.
• include_once – show you how to include a file once using the include_once construct.
• require & require_once – learn how to include files in a more robust way to a file with the require and require_once constructs.
• Using __DIR__ with a file include – show you how to use the __DIR__ magic constant when including a file.
• Variable variables – learn how to pass data to the included script using variable variables.

Section 13. State Management

• Cookie – learn how to store a piece of data on web browsers.
• Session – explain to you how sessions work.

Section 14. Processing Forms

• PHP form – show you how to process HTML forms.
• filter_has_var() function – check if a variable of a type exists.
• filter_var() function – sanitize and validate a variable using a filter.
• filter_input() function – sanitize and validate a variable of a type.
• Form validation – walk you through the step of validating a form in PHP.
• Checkbox – learn how to process checkboxes.
• Multiple checkboxes – show you how to handle a form that has multiple checkboxes with the same name.
• Radio button – learn how to handle radio buttons and radio groups.
• Select – show you how to handle the select element.
• CSRF – learn about CSRF attacks and how to prevent them by using a one-time token in PHP.
• Flash messages – show you how to implement session-based flash messages for creating and displaying messages across pages.
• Post-Redirect-Get (PRG) – learn how to use the PRG technique to prevent the double submit problem.
• File Upload– guide you on how to upload a file to the server securely.
• Upload multiple files – show you how to upload multiple files to the server securely.
• Contact form – show you how to create a contact form that sends email and prevent spam.
• Validation – learn how to build a reusable validate() function to validate inputs.
• Sanitize input – learn how to implement a reusable sanitize() function to sanitize inputs.
• Filter input – define a filter() helper furnction that both santizes and validates data.
• password_hash() – show you how to create a hash from a plain text password using a secure hashing algorithm.
• password_verify() – guide you on how to match a password with a hash.

Section 15. Login System

This section shows you how to use the learned skills and knowledge to build a simple PHP login system.

• Registration – show you how to build a account registration form.
• Login – learn how to create a login form.
• Email verification – add the email verification feature when users register for new accounts.
• Remember me – enhance the login form by adding a remember me checkbox to save the login even after closing the web browser.

Section 16. Working with Files

• Open a file – learn how to open a file for reading and/or writing using the fopen() function.
• Check a File Exists – show you how to check if a file exists using the file_exists(), is_readable(), and is_writable() functions.
• Read a file – show you how to read the contents of a file into a string or read a file line by line into a string.
• Read a file into a string – guide you on using the file_get_contents() function to read a file into a string.
• Read a file into an array – show you how to read the contents of a file into an array, each line of the file is an array element.
• Download a file – show you how to download a file from the webserver.
• Copy a file – show you how to copy a file to a new one.
• Delete a file – learn how to delete a file.
• Rename a file – guide you on renaming a file to a new one and optionally move it to another directory.
• Work with CSV Files – learn how to create and read CSV files in PHP.
• Get the size of a file – show how to get the size of a file in bytes using the filesize() function.
• File permissions – learn about the file permission and how to change it using the chmod() function.

Section 17. Working with Directories

• Manage directory – show you how to manage directories in PHP.
• glob – get files/directories in a directory that match a pattern.
• dirname – get the directory name of a path.
• basename – get the trailing name component of a path.
• pathinfo – return the components of a file path including directory name, trailing name component, filename, and file extension.

Section 18. String operations

• strlen – return the length of a string in bytes.
• substr – search for a substring in a string.
• strpos– locate the first occurrence of a substring in a string.
• str_replace– replace all occurrences of a substring with a new one in a string.
• implode – join an array of strings into a string using a separator.
• explode – split a string by a separator into an array of strings.
• trim – remove the whitespace characters or other characters from both ends of a string.
• ltrim – remove the whitespace characters or other characters from the beginning of a string.
• rtrim – remove the whitespace characters or other characters from the end of a string.
• htmlspecialchars() – show you how to escape special characters in a string.
• str_contains() – return true if a string contains with a substring.
• str_starts_with() – return true if a string starts with a substring.
• str_ends_with() – return true if a string ends with a substring.
• strtolower() – accept a string and return a new string with all alphabetic characters converted to lowercase.
• strtoupper() – accept a string and return a new string with all alphabetic characters converted to uppercase.
• ucfirst() – return a new string with the first alphabetic character converted to uppercase.
• ucwords() – return a new string with the first alphabetic character of each word converted to uppercase.

Section 19. Regular Expressions

• Regular expressions – introduce you to the regular expressions and show you how to use the preg_match(), preg_match_all(), and preg_replace() functions.
• Character Classes – match a character in a character set (\d, \w, \s)
• Anchors – match at the beginning (^) and/or end ($) of a string or line.
• Word Boundary – match the whole word using the word boundary (\b).
• Sets & Ranges – match a character in a set ([abc]) or range of characters ([a-z]).
• Quantifiers – match a number of instances of a character or character class using quantifiers ( \d{2,4}, \w+…).
• Greedy Quantifiers – learn how the greedy quantifiers work.
• Non-greedy (or lazy) Quantifiers – show you how to turn a greedy quantifier into a non-greedy quantifiers and explain how the non-greedy quantifiers work.
• Capturing groups – include a part of a match in the matches array and assign it a name using a named group.
• Backreferences – learn about the regex backreferences.
• Alternation – show you how to use the alternation, which is simply an OR operator in regular expressions.
• Lookahead – learn how to match A only if followed by B.
• Lookbehind – learn how to match A only if there’s is B before it.
• preg_match() – search for a match in a string using a regular expression.
• preg_match_all() – search for all matches in a string using a regular expression.
• preg_replace() – search and replace strings using a regular expression.

Section 20. PHP Date & Time

• Time– learn how to work with time.
• Date – show you how to use the date() function to format a timestamp.