PHP Cheat Sheet for Beginners

Tina Morlock — Thu, 15 May 2025 16:58:57 +0000

Note: I am primarily using this as a study tool as I'm upskilling my foundational knowledge. With this in mind, this document is ongoing, and I'll likely be updating it weekly.

Opening and closing tags:

<?php ?>

Note: omitting the closing tag at the end of a file can be beneficial so you don't have any unwanted white space at the end of the file

Printing:

echo 'This prints to the screen.';
<?= 'This works too.'; ?>

Commenting:

One line:

# This is a one-line comment in PHP

Multi-line:

/* This is a multi-
line comment in PHP */

Checking variable type:

var_dump($var_name);

Comparing Floats:
Note: Comparing floats in PHP is tricky because of precision. The following is a workaround for that limitation.

<?php
$a = 1.23456789;
$b = 1.23456780;
$epsilon = 0.00001;

if (abs($a - $b) < $epsilon) {
    echo "true";
}
?>

String Definitions:

'this is a string'

"this is a string"

<<<END
   this
        is also
               a string
END

<<<'EOD'
This is an example of
another type of string
you can use in PHP.
EOD

String Interpolation:

<?php
$juice = "apple";

echo "He drank some $juice juice." . PHP_EOL;

?>

echo 'this line prints a {$var}';

String concatenation uses a . rather than a + in PHP.

I used PHP's documentation as the source of my information here. Some of the code will be similar or identical.

DEV Community: Tina Morlock

PHP Cheat Sheet for Beginners