Need to test someone’s PHP developer skills, or prepare for a PHP interview?
Veteran developers and recruiters from our tech talent marketplace shared their secret PHP programmer interview questions and answers to help test a developer's PHP knowledge and experience.
If you're interviewing PHP developers, keep in mind that you should also ask these interview questions to test the applicant’s communication and management skills.
Here you’ll find junior, mid and senior PHP interview questions, as well as some PHP tasks for the interview.
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02
PEAR is a framework and repository for reusable PHP components. PEAR stands for PHP Extension and Application Repository. It contains all types of PHP code snippets and libraries. It also provides a command line interface to automatically install "packages".
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04
To execute a PHP script, use the PHP Command Line Interface (CLI) and specify the script file name as follows:
PHP script.PHP
05
PHP is partially case-sensitive. Variable names are case sensitive, but function names are not. If you define the function name in lowercase and call them in upper case, it will still work. UDFs are not case sensitive, but the rest of the language is case sensitive.
06
The PHP parsing engine needs a way to distinguish PHP code from other elements on the page. This mechanism is known as "switching to PHP". Escaping a string means reducing the ambiguity in quotes used in that string.
07
Some of the important characteristics of PHP variables include:
08
PHP has 8 data types that are used to create variables:
09
The following rules must be followed when naming a PHP variable:
10
The rules for determining the "truth" of any value that is not yet Boolean are as follows:
01
To define a constant, you must use the define() function, and to get the value of a constant, you just need to specify its name. Once you have defined a constant, it can never be changed or undefined. It is not necessary to have a constant with a $ symbol. A valid constant name begins with a letter or underscore.
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The final keyword in a method declaration indicates that the method cannot be overridden by subclasses. A class declared final cannot be subclassed. This is especially useful when we are creating an immutable class such as the String class. Properties cannot be declared final, only classes and methods can be declared final.
04
We use the "==" operator to check if two objects are instances of the same class and have the same attributes and equal values. We can also check if two objects refer to the same instance of the same class using the "===" identity operator.
05
PHP and Javascript cannot communicate directly as PHP is a server-side language and Javascript is a client-side language. However, we can exchange variables as PHP can generate Javascript code to be executed by the browser and it is possible to pass certain variables back to PHP via a URL.
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07
Some of the popular frameworks in PHP:
08
The Include () function is used to put data from one PHP file into another PHP file. If errors occur, the include () function issues a warning but does not stop the script execution, and it will continue execution.
The Require () function is also used to put data from one PHP file into another PHP file. If there are any errors, the require () function will throw a warning and fatal error and stop the script execution.
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Require () includes and evaluates a specific file, while require_once () does so only if it has not been included previously. The require_once () statement can be used to include a PHP file in another when you may need to include the called file more than once. So, require_once () is recommended when you want to include a file where you have a lot of functionality.
10
The foreach statement is used to loop through arrays. For each pass, the value of the current array element is assigned to $ value, the array pointer is moved by one, and the next pass will process the next element.
Syntax:
foreach (array as value)
{
code to be executed;
}
Example:
<?PHP
$colors = array("blue", "white", "black");
foreach ($colors as $value) {
echo "$value
";
}
?>
01
PHP has 3 types of arrays:
02
Set_time_limit (0), added at the beginning of the script, sets an infinite execution time so that there is no PHP error "maximum execution time exceeded". This can also be specified in the PHP.ini file.
03
PHP is a programming language whereas ASP.NET is a programming environment. Websites developed by ASP.NET can use C# as well as other languages such as J#. ASP.NET is compiled and PHP is interpreted. ASP.NET is designed for Windows computers, whereas PHP is platformless and usually runs on Linux servers.
04
Overloading is the definition of functions that have similar signatures but different parameters. Overriding only applies to derived classes where the parent class has defined a method and the derived class wishes to override that method. In PHP, you can only overload methods with the __call magic method.
05
They are both variables. But $ message is a variable with a fixed name. $$ message is a variable whose name is stored in $ message. For example, if $ message contains "var", $$ message is the same as $ var.
06
Basic steps to create a MySQL database using PHP:
07
GET |
POST |
The GET method can send a maximum of 1024 characters. |
The POST method has no limit on the size of the data sent. |
GET cannot be used to send binary data such as images or text documents to the server. |
The POST method can be used to send both ASCII and binary data. |
The data sent by the GET method can be accessed by using the QUERY_STRING environment variable. |
The data sent by the POST method goes through the HTTP header, so the security depends on the HTTP protocol. |
PHP provides an associative array $ _GET for accessing all submitted information using the GET method. |
PHP provides an associative array $ _POST to access all submitted information using the POST method. |
08
PHP callbacks are functions that can be called dynamically by PHP. They are used by native functions like array_map, usort, preg_replace_callback, etc. A callback function is a function that you create yourself and then pass to another function as an argument. After accessing your callback function, the receiving function can call it at any time.
Here's a basic example of a callback function:
<?PHP
function thisFuncTakesACallback($callbackFunc)
{
echo "I'm going to call $callbackFunc!
";
$callbackFunc();
}
function thisFuncGetsCalled()
{
echo "I'm a callback function!
";
}
thisFuncTakesACallback( 'thisFuncGetsCalled' );
?>
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PHP provides the cURL library, which is probably already included in the default PHP installation. cURL stands for Client URL and it allows you to connect to the URL and get information from that page, such as the HTML content of the page, HTTP headers, and related data.
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An exception that is thrown at compile time is called a checked exception. This exception cannot be ignored and must be handled with care. For example, if you use the FileReader class to read data from a file, and the file specified in the class constructor does not exist, a FileNotFoundException is thrown and you have to handle that exception. To do this, you will need to write code in a try-catch block and handle the exception. On the other hand, an exception thrown at runtime is called an unchecked-exception.
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