Each chapter includes aims, a summary and practical exercises (with solutions) to support learning. Chapters are designed to stand alone as far as possible, so that they can be studied independently of the rest of the text by those with some previous knowledge of the languages. There is a comprehensive glossary of technical terms, together with extensive appendices for quick reference of language features.

Amongst revisions made since the first edition, the mysql family of functions used for database access has been replaced by the improved mysqli functions throughout and further chapters have been added giving detailed accounts showing how to tackle some important practical applications. All the examples in this second edition have been tested using PHP version 8.3.22.