If this was me that should should begin the journey as a frontend developer moving towards the backend. You know, when you have your backend up and running in p

If this was me that should should begin the journey as a frontend developer moving towards the backend. You know, when you have your backend up and running in php, you are going to request JSON from it. So why now start by adding a folder to your web app and in that folder place some static json files with the content you one day wants to retrive from the backend. When you have your frontend working with these static json files, then you can look into how to create a WebApi in php that generates the same json. This way you can do it step by step.