PHP

PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor
Paradigm(s)	imperative, object-oriented, procedural, reflective
Appeared in	1995; 17 years ago  (1995)[1]
Designed by	Rasmus Lerdorf
Developer	The PHP Group
Stable release	5.4.3 (May 8, 2012; 49 days ago  (2012-05-08))
Typing discipline	Dynamic, weak
Major implementations	Zend Engine, Phalanger, Quercus, Project Zero, HipHop
Influenced by	C, C++, Java, Perl, Tcl[1]
Implementation language	C
OS	Cross-platform
License	PHP License
Usual filename extensions	.php, .phtml .php4 .php3 .php5 .phps
Website	www.php.net
PHP Programming at Wikibooks

PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for Web development to produce dynamic Web pages. It is one of the first developed server-side scripting languages to be embedded into an HTML source document, rather than calling an external file to process data. Ultimately, the code is interpreted by a Web server with a PHP processor module which generates the resulting Web page. It also has evolved to include a command-line interface capability and can be used in standalone graphical applications.^[2] PHP can be deployed on most Web servers and also as a standalone shell on almost every operating system and platform free of charge.^[3] A competitor to Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP) server-side script engine^[4] and similar languages, PHP is installed on more than 20 million Web sites and 1 million Web servers.^[5]

PHP was originally created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995. The main implementation of PHP is now produced by The PHP Group and serves as the formal reference to the PHP language.^[6] PHP is free software released under the PHP License, which is incompatible with the GNU General Public License (GPL) due to restrictions on the usage of the term PHP.^[7]

While PHP originally stood for "Personal Home Page", it is now said to stand for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor", a recursive acronym.^[8]

History[link]

Rasmus Lerdorf, who wrote the original Common Gateway Interface (CGI) component together with Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski, who rewrote the parser that formed PHP 3

PHP development began in 1994 when the Danish/Greenlandic/Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf initially created a set of Perl scripts he called "Personal Home Page Tools" to maintain his personal homepage. The scripts performed tasks such as displaying his résumé and recording his web-page traffic.^[6][9][10] Lerdorf initially announced the release of PHP on the comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi Usenet discussion group on June 8, 1995.^[11]

He rewrote these scripts as Common Gateway Interface (CGI) binaries in C, extending them to add the ability to work with Web forms and to communicate with databases and called this implementation "Personal Home Page/Forms Interpreter" or PHP/FI. PHP/FI could be used to build simple, dynamic Web applications. Lerdorf released PHP/FI as "Personal Home Page Tools (PHP Tools) version 1.0" publicly on June 8, 1995, to accelerate bug location and improve the code.^[12] This release already had the basic functionality that PHP has today. This included Perl-like variables, form handling, and the ability to embed HTML. The syntax was similar to Perl but was more limited and simpler, although less consistent.^[6] A development team began to form and, after months of work and beta testing, officially released PHP/FI 2 in November 1997.

Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans, two Israeli developers at the Technion IIT, rewrote the parser in 1997 and formed the base of PHP 3, changing the language's name to the recursive initialism PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.^[6] Afterward, public testing of PHP 3 began, and the official launch came in June 1998. Suraski and Gutmans then started a new rewrite of PHP's core, producing the Zend Engine in 1999.^[13] They also founded Zend Technologies in Ramat Gan, Israel.^[6]

On May 22, 2000, PHP 4, powered by the Zend Engine 1.0, was released.^[6] As of August 2008 this branch is up to version 4.4.9. PHP 4 is no longer under development nor will any security updates be released.^[14][15]

On July 13, 2004, PHP 5 was released, powered by the new Zend Engine II.^[6] PHP 5 included new features such as improved support for object-oriented programming, the PHP Data Objects (PDO) extension (which defines a lightweight and consistent interface for accessing databases), and numerous performance enhancements.^[16] In 2008 PHP 5 became the only stable version under development. Late static binding had been missing from PHP and was added in version 5.3.^[17][18]

A new major version has been under development alongside PHP 5 for several years. This version was originally planned to be released as PHP 6 as a result of its significant changes, which included plans for full Unicode support. However, Unicode support took developers much longer to implement than originally thought, and the decision was made in March 2010^[19] to move the project to a branch, with features still under development moved to trunk.

Changes in the new code include the removal of register_globals,^[20] magic quotes, and safe mode.^[14][21] The reason for the removals was that register_globals had opened security holes by intentionally allowing runtime data injection, and the use of magic quotes had an unpredictable nature. Instead, to escape characters, magic quotes may be replaced with the addslashes() function, or more appropriately an escape mechanism specific to the database vendor itself like mysql_real_escape_string() for MySQL. Functions that will be removed in future versions and have been deprecated in PHP 5.3 will produce a warning if used.^[22]

Many high-profile open-source projects ceased to support PHP 4 in new code as of February 5, 2008, because of the GoPHP5 initiative,^[23] provided by a consortium of PHP developers promoting the transition from PHP 4 to PHP 5.^[24][25]

Since version 5.4, PHP has native support for Unicode or multibyte strings, allowing strings as well as class-, method-, and function-names to contain non-ASCII characters.^[26][27]

PHP interpreters are available on both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems, but on Microsoft Windows the only official distribution is a 32-bit implementation, requiring Windows 32-bit compatibility mode while using Internet Information Services (IIS) on a 64-bit Windows platform. Experimental 64-bit versions of PHP 5.3.0 were briefly available for MS Windows, but have since been removed.^[28]

Licensing[link]

PHP is free software released under the PHP License, which insists that:^[29]

  4. Products derived from this software may not be called "PHP", nor
     may "PHP" appear in their name, without prior written permission
     from group@php.net.  You may indicate that your software works in
     conjunction with PHP by saying "Foo for PHP" instead of calling
     it "PHP Foo" or "phpfoo"

This restriction on use of the name PHP makes it incompatible with the GNU General Public License (GPL).^[30]

Release history[link]

Beginning on June 28, 2011, the PHP Group began following a timeline for when new versions of PHP will be released.^[40] Under this timeline, at least one release should occur every month. Once per year, a minor release should occur which can include new features. Every minor release should at least have 2 years of security and bug fixes, followed by at least 1 year of only security fixes, for a total of a 3 year release process for every minor release. No new features (unless small and self contained) will be introduced into a minor release during the 3 year release process.

Usage[link]

PHP is a general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited to server-side web development where PHP generally runs on a web server. Any PHP code in a requested file is executed by the PHP runtime, usually to create dynamic web page content or dynamic images used on Web sites or elsewhere.^[41] It can also be used for command-line scripting and client-side graphical user interface (GUI) applications. PHP can be deployed on most Web servers, many operating systems and platforms, and can be used with many relational database management systems (RDBMS). It is available free of charge, and the PHP Group provides the complete source code for users to build, customize and extend for their own use.^[3]

PHP acts primarily as a filter,^[42] taking input from a file or stream containing text and/or PHP instructions and outputting another stream of data; most commonly the output will be HTML. Since PHP 4, the PHP parser compiles input to produce bytecode for processing by the Zend Engine, giving improved performance over its interpreter predecessor.^[43]

Originally designed to create dynamic Web pages, PHP now focuses mainly on server-side scripting,^[44] and it is similar to other server-side scripting languages that provide dynamic content from a Web server to a client, such as Microsoft's ASP.NET, Sun Microsystems' JavaServer Pages,^[45] and mod_perl. PHP has also attracted the development of many frameworks that provide building blocks and a design structure to promote rapid application development (RAD). Some of these include CakePHP, Symfony, CodeIgniter, Yii Framework, and Zend Framework, offering features similar to other web application frameworks.

The LAMP architecture has become popular in the Web industry as a way of deploying Web applications. PHP is commonly used as the P in this bundle alongside Linux, Apache and MySQL, although the P may also refer to Python or Perl or some mix of the three. Similar packages are also available for Windows and OS X, then called WAMP and MAMP, with the first letter standing for the respective operating system.

As of April 2007^[update], over 20 million Internet domains had Web services hosted on servers with PHP installed and mod_php was recorded as the most popular Apache HTTP Server module.^[46] PHP is used as the server-side programming language on 75% of all Web servers.^[47] Web content management systems written in PHP include MediaWiki,^[48] Joomla, eZ Publish, SilverStripe,^[49] WordPress,^[50] Drupal ^[51] and Moodle.^[52] All Web sites created using these tools are written in PHP, including the user-facing portion of Wikipedia, Facebook,^[53] and Digg.^[54]

Security[link]

Vulnerabilities are caused mostly by not following best practice programming rules: technical security flaws of the language itself or of its core libraries are not frequent (23 in 2008, about 1% of the total).^[55][56] Recognizing that programmers make mistakes, some languages include taint checking to detect automatically the lack of input validation which induces many issues. Such a feature is being developed for PHP,^[57] but its inclusion in a release has been rejected several times in the past.^[58][59]

There are advanced protection patches such as Suhosin and Hardening-Patch, especially designed for Web hosting environments.^[60]

PHPIDS adds security to any PHP application to defend against intrusions. PHPIDS detects attacks based on cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, header injection, directory traversal, remote file execution, remote file inclusion, and denial-of-service (DoS).^[61]

Syntax[link]

 <head>
   <meta charset="utf-8">
   <title>PHP Test</title>
 </head>
 <body>
 <?php
 echo 'Hello World';
 /* echo("Hello World"); works as well,
 although echo is not a function, but a
 language construct. In some cases, such
 as when multiple parameters are passed
 to echo, parameters cannot be enclosed
 in parentheses. */
 ?>
 </body>

The PHP interpreter only executes PHP code within its delimiters. Anything outside its delimiters is not processed by PHP (although non-PHP text is still subject to control structures described in PHP code). The most common delimiters are <?php to open and ?> to close PHP sections. <script language="php"> and </script> delimiters are also available, as are the shortened forms <? or <?= (which is used to echo back a string or variable) and ?> as well as ASP-style short forms <% or <%= and %>. While short delimiters are used, they make script files less portable as support for them can be disabled in the PHP configuration, and so they are discouraged.^[62] The purpose of all these delimiters is to separate PHP code from non-PHP code, including HTML.^[63]

The first form of delimiters, <?php and ?>, in XHTML and other XML documents, creates correctly formed XML 'processing instructions'.^[64] This means that the resulting mixture of PHP code and other markup in the server-side file is itself well-formed XML.

Variables are prefixed with a dollar symbol, and a type does not need to be specified in advance. Unlike function and class names, variable names are case sensitive. Both double-quoted ("") and heredoc strings provide the ability to interpolate a variable's value into the string.^[65] PHP treats newlines as whitespace in the manner of a free-form language (except when inside string quotes), and statements are terminated by a semicolon.^[66] PHP has three types of comment syntax: /* */ marks block and inline comments; // as well as # are used for one-line comments.^[67] The echo statement is one of several facilities PHP provides to output text, e.g., to a Web browser.

In terms of keywords and language syntax, PHP is similar to most high level languages that follow the C style syntax. if conditions, for and while loops, and function returns are similar in syntax to languages such as C, C++, Java and Perl.

Data types[link]

PHP stores whole numbers in a platform-dependent range, either a 64-bit or 32-bit signed integer equivalent to the C-language long type. Unsigned integers are converted to signed values in certain situations; this behavior is different from other programming languages.^[68] Integer variables can be assigned using decimal (positive and negative), octal, and hexadecimal notations. Floating point numbers are also stored in a platform-specific range. They can be specified using floating point notation, or two forms of scientific notation.^[69] PHP has a native Boolean type that is similar to the native Boolean types in Java and C++. Using the Boolean type conversion rules, non-zero values are interpreted as true and zero as false, as in Perl and C++.^[69] The null data type represents a variable that has no value. The only value in the null data type is NULL.^[69] Variables of the "resource" type represent references to resources from external sources. These are typically created by functions from a particular extension, and can only be processed by functions from the same extension; examples include file, image, and database resources.^[69] Arrays can contain elements of any type that PHP can handle, including resources, objects, and even other arrays. Order is preserved in lists of values and in hashes with both keys and values, and the two can be intermingled.^[69] PHP also supports strings, which can be used with single quotes, double quotes, nowdoc or heredoc syntax.^[70]

The Standard PHP Library (SPL) attempts to solve standard problems and implements efficient data access interfaces and classes.^[71]

Functions[link]

PHP has hundreds of base functions and thousands more via extensions. These functions are well documented on the PHP site; however, the built-in library has a wide variety of naming conventions and inconsistencies.^[72] PHP currently has no functions for thread programming, although it does support multiprocess programming on POSIX systems.^[73]

Additional functions can be defined by a developer: <source lang=php> function myFunction() { //declares a function, this is named myFunction

   return 'John Doe'; //returns the value 'John Doe'

}

echo 'My name is ' . myFunction() . '!'; //outputs the text and the return variable of the

                                        //myFunction, the function is also called

//the result of the output will be 'My name is John Doe!' </source>

PHP 5.2 and earlier[link]

Functions are not first-class functions and can only be referenced by their name, directly or dynamically by a variable containing the name of the function.^[74] User-defined functions can be created at any time without being prototyped.^[74] Functions can be defined inside code blocks, permitting a run-time decision as to whether or not a function should be defined. Function calls must use parentheses, with the exception of zero argument class constructor functions called with the PHP new operator, where parentheses are optional. PHP supports quasi-anonymous functions through the create_function() function, although they are not true anonymous functions because anonymous functions are nameless, but functions can only be referenced by name, or indirectly through a variable $function_name();, in PHP.^[74]

PHP 5.3 and newer[link]

PHP gained support for closures. True anonymous functions are supported using the following syntax: <source lang=php> function getAdder($x) {

   return function($y) use ($x) {
       return $x + $y;
   };

}

$adder = getAdder(8); echo $adder(2); // prints "10" </source> Here, the getAdder() function creates a closure using the parameter $x (the keyword use imports a variable from the lexical context), which takes an additional argument $y and returns it to the caller. Such a function is a first class object, meaning that it can be stored in a variable, passed as a parameter to other functions, etc. For more details see Lambda functions and closures RFC.

The goto flow control statement is used as follows: <source lang=php> function lock() {

   $file = fopen('file.txt', 'r+');
   retry:
   if (!flock($file, LOCK_EX & LOCK_NB)) {
       goto retry;
   }
   fwrite($file, 'Success!');
   fclose($file);
   return 0;

} </source> When flock() is called, PHP opens a file and tries to lock it. The target label retry: defines the point to which execution should return if flock() is unsuccessful and goto retry; is called. The goto statement is restricted and requires that the target label be in the same file and context.

The goto statement has been supported since PHP 5.3.

Objects[link]

Basic object-oriented programming functionality was added in PHP 3 and improved in PHP 4.^[6] Object handling was completely rewritten for PHP 5, expanding the feature set and enhancing performance.^[75] In previous versions of PHP, objects were handled like value types.^[75] The drawback of this method was that the whole object was copied when a variable was assigned or passed as a parameter to a method. In the new approach, objects are referenced by handle, and not by value. PHP 5 introduced private and protected member variables and methods, along with abstract classes, final classes, abstract methods, and final methods. It also introduced a standard way of declaring constructors and destructors, similar to that of other object-oriented languages such as C++, and a standard exception handling model. Furthermore, PHP 5 added interfaces and allowed for multiple interfaces to be implemented. There are special interfaces that allow objects to interact with the runtime system. Objects implementing ArrayAccess can be used with array syntax and objects implementing Iterator or IteratorAggregate can be used with the foreach language construct. There is no virtual table feature in the engine, so static variables are bound with a name instead of a reference at compile time.^[76]

If the developer creates a copy of an object using the reserved word clone, the Zend engine will check if a __clone() method has been defined or not. If not, it will call a default __clone() which will copy the object's properties. If a __clone() method is defined, then it will be responsible for setting the necessary properties in the created object. For convenience, the engine will supply a function that imports the properties of the source object, so that the programmer can start with a by-value replica of the source object and only override properties that need to be changed.^[77]

Basic example of object-oriented programming as described above: <source lang="php"> class Person {

  public $firstName;
  public $lastName;

  public function __construct($firstName, $lastName = ) { //Optional parameter
      $this->firstName = $firstName;
      $this->lastName = $lastName;
  }

  public function greet() {
      return "Hello, my name is " . $this->firstName . " " . $this->lastName . ".";
  }

  public static function staticGreet($firstName, $lastName) {
      return "Hello, my name is " . $firstName . " " . $lastName . ".";
  }

}

$he = new Person('John', 'Smith'); $she = new Person('Sally', 'Davis'); $other = new Person('Joe');

echo $he->greet(); // prints "Hello, my name is John Smith." echo '
'; echo $she->greet(); // prints "Hello, my name is Sally Davis." echo '
'; echo $other->greet(); // prints "Hello, my name is Joe ." echo '
'; echo Person::staticGreet('Jane', 'Doe'); // prints "Hello, my name is Jane Doe." </source>

Visibility of properties and methods[link]

The visibility of PHP properties and methods refers to visibility in PHP. It is defined using the keywords public, private, and protected. The default is public, if only var is used; var is a synonym for public. Items declared public can be accessed everywhere. protected limits access to inherited classes (and to the class that defines the item). private limits visibility only to the class that defines the item.^[78] Objects of the same type have access to each other's private and protected members even though they are not the same instance. PHP's member visibility features have sometimes been described as "highly useful."^[79] However, they have also sometimes been described as "at best irrelevant and at worst positively harmful."^[80]

Speed optimization[link]

PHP source code is compiled on-the-fly to an internal format that can be executed by the PHP engine.^[81][82] In order to speed up execution time and not have to compile the PHP source code every time the Web page is accessed, PHP scripts can also be deployed in executable format using a PHP compiler.

Code optimizers aim to enhance the performance of the compiled code by reducing its size, merging redundant instructions and making other changes that can reduce the execution time. With PHP, there are often opportunities for code optimization.^[83] An example of a code optimizer is the eAccelerator PHP extension.^[84]

Another approach for reducing compilation overhead for PHP servers is using an opcode cache. Opcode caches work by caching the compiled form of a PHP script (opcodes) in shared memory to avoid the overhead of parsing and compiling the code every time the script runs. An opcode cache, APC, is planned to be built into an upcoming release of PHP (but not 5.4 ^[85] as previously planned ^[86]).

Opcode caching and code optimization can be combined for best efficiency, as the modifications do not depend on each other (they happen in distinct stages of the compilation).

Compilers[link]

The PHP language was originally implemented as an interpreter. Several compilers have been developed which decouple the PHP language from the interpreter. Advantages of compilation include better execution speed, static analysis, and improved interoperability with code written in other languages.^[87] PHP compilers of note include Phalanger, which compiles PHP into Common Intermediate Language (CIL) byte-code, and HipHop, developed at Facebook and now available as open source, which transforms the PHP Script into C++, then compiles it, reducing server load up to 50%.

Resources[link]

PHP includes free and open source libraries with the core build. PHP is a fundamentally Internet-aware system with modules built in for accessing File Transfer Protocol (FTP) servers, many database servers, embedded SQL libraries such as embedded PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQLite, LDAP servers, and others. Many functions familiar to C programmers such as those in the stdio family are available in the standard PHP build.^[88]

PHP allows developers to write extensions in C to add functionality to the PHP language. These can then be compiled into PHP or loaded dynamically at runtime. Extensions have been written to add support for the Windows API, process management on Unix-like operating systems, multibyte strings (Unicode), cURL, and several popular compression formats. Some more unusual features include integration with Internet Relay Chat, dynamic generation of images and Adobe Flash content, and even speech synthesis. The PHP Extension Community Library (PECL) project is a repository for extensions to the PHP language.^[89]

Zend provides a certification exam for programmers to become certified PHP developers.

See also[link]

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of PHP

	Free software portal
	Computer programming portal

• Comparison of programming languages
• Comparison of PHP frameworks
• List of AMP packages
• List of PHP editors
• PHP accelerator
• PHP-FPM
• PHP-GTK
• Template processor
• EasyPHP
• XAMPP
• Zend Certified Engineer
• Zend Server Community Edition

Notes[link]

External links[link]

Find more about PHP on Wikipedia's sister projects:
	Images and media from Commons
	Learning resources from Wikiversity
	Textbooks from Wikibooks

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More spoken articles

• Official website
• PHP at the Open Directory Project
• PHP Section on DevShed
• PHP Reference Manual
• PHP PDO Beginner's Tutorial and Explanation

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The Basics
The Basics at the Oxford Art Factory, 2010
Background information
Origin	Melbourne, Australia
Genres	Rock
Years active	2002–present
Labels	Independent, Albert Records
Associated acts	Gotye, Down Hills Home, Dog With Wheels, Blood Red Bird
Website	The Basics Official Website
Members
Wally De Backer Kris Schroeder Tim Heath
Past members
Michael Hubbard
Notable instruments
Lead guitar, drums, bass guitar.

The Basics ( /ˈbæzɪtʃ/ BAZZ-ich) are a three-piece band from Melbourne, Australia, formed by Wally De Backer and Kris Schroeder in 2002. Their style has been described as anything from 'indie-pop' to 'rock'n'roll' to 'pop-rock', though their records show they span a wide range of genres, including reggae, ska, country, and electro-pop. They are "recognised as one of Australia's hardest-working bands".^[1]

With close to 1000 shows in their ten-year career, their live performances are well-known for their sense of humour and energy.^[2]

Formation[link]

The Basics were formed after Kris met Wally at a party in Melbourne.^[3] The event was to see off the young aspiring producer, who was about to depart for Los Angeles, and together with a number of musician friends, the two jammed on some blues-rock standards. Later that night, they bonded over a mutual love of The Beatles, 70s and 80s cartoon theme songs and old Sierra adventure games.

Initially, they played around Melbourne as an acoustic guitar/drums combo, starting at The Opposition in Frankston and the House of Fools in Footscray, where in late 2002 they met Michael Hubbard and later invited him to join them on electric guitar.^[4] Though lacking any real experience with the instrument, Kris willingly purchased his first bass guitar, and the trio was born. During this time, the group start performing songs with more complicated three-part harmony.

During late 2002 and early 2003, The Basics recorded and released an album called Get Back through MGM Distribution. They began what was to become regular tours of the East and West coasts of Australia.

2004-2005: Current lineup[link]

Tim Heath joined the group in June 2004, after Michael decided to pursue his solo career, which has included being one half of Down Hills Home.^[4] Tim was reportedly the only person to reply to an advertisement in Melbourne's Beat Magazine looking for a new guitarist. Tim apparently answered the advertisement - which said the applicant "must have a love of 50s and 60s rock'n'roll" - thinking that he would be meeting "a couple of old guys to play with on the weekends over some beers". They soon recorded For Girls Like You.

The Basics in 2005 continued to tour and play small festivals, and after releasing For Girls Like You through MGM Distribution, they departed for a national tour of Australia, which lasted for two months and took them to every Australian state and territory. Stuart Padbury, a young Melbourne sound engineer, joined them on much of this tour. On returning, the band began demonstrating songs for a new album.

2006-2009: Touring and soundtracks[link]

In 2006, The Basics began recording what was to become known as Stand Out/Fit In. Taking several months, it was not completed until the end of the year, despite intentions to have it released in June. Instead, they held a successful 'album preview', where each of the tracks was demonstrated in 'rough form' accompanied by a music video for each (produced by Melbourne photographic artist James Bryans). The band also talked about the origins of the songs. This event brought a lot of attention to the band for the idea's originality. They pre-released a radio single 'Just Hold On' from the album. The band were invited to play the hugely popular Homebake Festival in Sydney, where they received a great response, after being introduced onto the stage by a short stocky Asian guy with big calves ("one of the highlights" wrote The Daily Telegraph).

In 2007, the band departed on a tri-state residency which saw them play Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane every week for the month of April - a bold move which brought further attention to the band for its original idea.^[5] Riding on the wave of this tour, Schroeder, De Backer and Heath departed on their first overseas tour which saw them performing 26 shows around Japan, Norway and the United Kingdom.^[6] They also toured twice more up the East Coast, one of which was with popular Japanese band The Bawdies. Their song 'Rattle My Chain' was used in a series of commercials for Volvo Australia. The song 'Hey There!' featured in the British film The Bank Job - starring Jason Statham - and was used as the backing for a February 2007 short film directed by Tim Longhurst called The Rip. Their song 'Better' was featured in a surfing documentary about the invention of the shortboard in 1967.

In 2008, the band appeared on Australia's Channel 9 for Australia Day celebrations, performing two of their songs - 'Just Hold On' and 'Hey There!' - to an estimated audience of 2 million. Securing an Australian Government grant, they embarked on a two-month tour of Australia, specifically targeting "culturally underprivileged groups" in rural and regional schoolchildren and Indigenous communities. The programme had them holding masterclasses and performing alongside Indigenous groups in the remote Northern Territory and Queensland.^[7][8] Their initiative also had them raising money for the charity Lifeline^{[disambiguation needed ]}, their contribution to which was recognised with a plaque at the end of the tour. Season two of Californication starring David Duchovny featured their cover of the classic 'Have Love, Will Travel', most famously covered by 'The Sonics'.

In 2009, The Basics for the first time enjoyed the support of Australian radio network Triple J, which had reportedly snubbed the band's previous material.^[9] The singles 'With This Ship' and 'Like A Brother' were added to the station's playlist, and momentum carried The Basics overseas for a second tour of the United Kingdom and Norway, and also a series of shows in Dublin, Ireland. They were joined by the longtime front-of-house engineer Stuart Padbury, who had been mixing them since 2005. The band was often seen in the Grafton Street Mall in Dublin, busking to promote their concerts there. Their second show in Oslo, Norway, saw the band perform with Hot Tub, one of the members of the Norwegian boy band "Boyzvoice", in his first performance for several years. Season Eight of Scrubs featured the song 'Lookin' Over My Shoulder'.

Despite all this promise, the band's album Keep Your Friends Close - produced and part-recorded by Peter Cobbin at London's Abbey Road Studios - though enjoying many favourable reviews,^{[10][11][12][13]} failed to impress Richard Kingsmill, music director of Triple J. This effectively ended the band's apparent upward spiral and the resulting album launch tour was reportedly "trying".

2010: Hiatus and live album[link]

In 2010, following the band's fourth stint at the Tamworth Country Music Festival, and the recording of a yet-unreleased live album, an indefinite hiatus was announced on the band's websites. This was in part due to the impending release of a new album produced by Wally for his Gotye project, and also to reported tensions within the band following the previous year's disappointments.

However, this hiatus was soon broken with a two-month residency at the Northcote Social Club in Melbourne, which saw an apparent return to form.^[14] The band's EP "Wait For You" enjoys airplay on Triple J.^[15] The Basics also played a one-off show at Sydney's Oxford Art Factory.^[16]

On 20 August 2010, The Basics released their fourth LP /ðəˈbæzɪtʃ/, available free and exclusively from their website for digital download^[17]. The band had reportedly moved to expand their listenership through this free giveaway, though 300 "Deluxe" CD/vinyl versions have been printed. /ðəˈbæzɪtʃ/ was recorded at the Northcote Social Club on 6 February, "in front of a live studio audience", and like the previous record, was mixed by Peter Cobbin at Abbey Road Studios. Technically a self-titled album, the phonetics spell out the accurate pronunciation of the band’s name. Kris Schroeder: "For years we’ve worked at bringing our live energy into the studio and thus far it’s been a bit hit-and-miss. Our trick this time was to pull a switcheroo and bring the studio to us instead; the result is the best and closest to us we’ve sounded yet."

Melbourne thespian and Dog With Wheels bassist David Bramble - friends with Heath from university days - has occasionally joined the band on tour, playing keys, often while sporting a large moustache. Other guests have included Jake Mason (saxophone), also of Cookin' on 3 Burners and The Bamboos^{[disambiguation needed ]}, Gideon Brazil (saxophone, flute), Simon Imrei (guitar and vocals) and Monty MacKenzie (saxophone).

Covers have often made an appearance from various sources: to date, some of the bands covered have been Cream, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, The Police, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, New Kids on the Block, Richard Berry, Sonny Curtis and The Crickets, JJ Cale, Harry Nilsson, Bill Scott, Ryan Adams and The Coasters (via The Beatles for their cover of Three Cool Cats).

Members[link]

Current

• Wally De Backer - drums, vocals (2002-present)
• Kris Schroeder - bass, vocals (2002-present)
• Tim Heath - guitar, vocals (2004-present)

Former

• Michael Hubbard - guitar, vocals (2002-2004)

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

• Get Back (15 January 2004)
• Stand Out/Fit In (5 May 2007)
• Keep Your Friends Close (25 September 2009)
• /ðəˈbæzɪtʃ/ (20 August 2010)

EP[link]

• For Girls Like You (11 July 2005)
• Lookin' Over My Shoulder (10 February 2007)
• Like A Brother (5 June 2009)
• Wait For You (21 May 2010)

Singles[link]

• Call It Rhythm & Blues (20 August 2004)
• Just Hold On
• With This Ship (22 February 2009)

Upcoming projects[link]

The band is taking a three year hiatus, with an announced return to the stage together in early 2014. Wally De Backer launched Making Mirrors under his Gotye act in August 2011, Tim Heath will be touring and recording with Blood Red Bird, and Kris Schroeder recorded a solo EP titled, Patience in the Face of Control, before leaving Australia to work with the Red Cross in Kenya for a two year sabbatical.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official Website
• Myspace Website