PHP: Beyond Building Websites

This is my first post on Codementor!

I will be writing about PHP and what you can do with it beyond building websites.

Have you had to introduce PHP to a newbie and the newbie asks you what else PHP can do except for building websites and you can’t really say much? Lool! I have been in that situation before. I don’t know about you but I have been caught in a situation where developers Python developers say things like, “You can't do anything except build websites with PHP alone,” to me. Most of the time, I couldn’t come up with anything convincing enough, and that's why I decided to do a little research on other things PHP can do. I hope you enjoy this post.

To start with, the scripting language has other capabilities apart from server-side scripting for building some basic web application, a complex web application, or command-line scripting that we may not have thought of or explored. These functions will be briefly discussed below:

Artificial Intelligence Bot (AI)

Do you know that apart from building websites you can build Artificial Intelligence bots with PHP on Slack, Telegram, Facebook bot platforms without sweat. Here (https://chatbotsmagazine.com/how-to-create-facebook-messenger-bot-in-php-2620784d5583) is a reference to a medium post that teaches you how to get started on Facebook Messenger Platform. Slack also supports building your AI bot with PHP. Check it here (https://www.twilio.com/blog/2017/02/how-to-build-a-slack-bot-using-php.html). Also, check out how to build bots on one of PHP’s best frameworks (Laravel) here

Virtual Reality (VR)

PHP can be used for virtual reality on the web. So it means you can still spice up your normal web applications. Virtual reality (VR) deals with computer technologies that use virtual reality headsets to generate the realistic images, sounds and other sensations that replicate a real environment or create an imaginary setting. IdeaSpaceVR is a good example of a PHP content management system (CMS) for the virtual reality web (WebVR). Check it out on their websites (https://www.ideaspacevr.org/)

Desktop Applications

Though many programmers prefer to write their desktop application in C++, Java or Cross-Platform technologies like Electron, but it is important to know that PHP can be used for building desktop Apps. You can use PHP-GTK to write a desktop application. You also have the ability to write cross-platform applications this way but you should know PHP-GTK is an just extension to PHP. You can learn more from this link (http://gtk.php.net/).

Machine Learning (ML)

Machine learning is teaching the computer how to learn by itself. It is far easier to be done, especially when you have small data set and a good level of expertise in your field. Pretty sure that many people do not know that with the release of PHP 7.0 late 2015, machine learning with PHP has been awesome. Awesome machine learning libraries have being written with PHP. One of them can be found in this Github repository (http://gtk.php.net/)

Internet of Things (IOT)

According to Techprevue.com,
“Well PHP comes around as the best support for IoT with it being affordable and most flexible language platform out there. As they both come together, they will create new and exciting ways for users to interface the digital world like never before and offer ways so that developers can monetize new IoT Commerce opportunities. In the future, we expect these two to play brilliant role in just everything and make life no less than a movie for you, like create a drinks machine with PHP, to a real life alarm as when a door in Minecraft opens.”
That may not be enough to buttress my point. So, I have decided to bring out projects on IOT with PHP. Some are PHP IOT Examples (https://github.com/colinodell/php-iot-examples) on Github and Maintang’s IOT-PHP (https://github.com/Miantang/IoT-PHP) repository on Github.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading. Promised it was going to be short!!! I hope I have been able to open your eyes to other things you can do with PHP, apart from just building websites. You can spice up your PHP development life with ML, AL, AI, and more.
If you like my post, show me love by recommending my post. Follow me on Twitter @goodnesskayode and Medium @goodnesskay.

Enjoy pushing PHP codes!!!