PHP Web App

PHP Web App #

Overview #

The PHP Web App project type allows you to make a simple web application with a PHP backend and HTML5 frontend. PHP scripts are executed in a backend process and generate HTML, which is displayed in a browser on Pip’s screen.

Getting Started #

Serving files is taken care of behind the scenes (see Hosting Environment, below) so creating a web application is simply a matter of writing PHP scripts and saving them in the project folder.

To get started, save the following code in index.php:

<!doctype html>

<html>
  <head>
    <title>PHP Application</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Hello World!</h2>
    Today's date is <?php echo date("d/m/Y"); ?>
  </body>
</html>

Project Layout #

index.php - application entry point

Other files (PHP scripts, images, CSS, JavaScript, and more) may be added anywhere to the project’s folder structure. The project root folder is also the document root; for example, a file called cat.jpg placed in the images folder is accessible at the URL path /images/cat.jpg.

Integrating with Pip’s hardware from HTML5 #

It’s possible to control Pip’s LEDs and GPIOs from the browser by including pipkit.js. See In-browser JavaScript for more information.

Hosting Environment #

The PHP application in run as a FastCGI application using lighttpd, PHP version 7.4. The lighttpd configuration can be viewed here.