PHP & MySQL® Web Development All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies®

Chapter 1. Introduction to Extensions

In This Chapter

• Fitting extensions into the overall PHP architecture

• Determining which extensions are loaded

• Loading extensions

By itself, PHP is a pretty sparse language. It doesn't actually do much — which is exactly as it should be so that PHP doesn't load features you don't need. The developers in the PHP community have created code libraries that add functionality to, or extend, the base PHP language.

This chapter gives you the background you need to use PHP extensions instead of spending the next month figuring out how to parse XML or generate images dynamically.