Top 20 Questions to Ask When Hiring a PHP Developer

Whenever you are hiring a PHP developer it is important that you have a means of assessing the developer’s technical knowledge. Someone that has a solid technical background in PHP will prove useful for your project. It is therefore important that you have the right set of questions to narrow down your selection and get you the best talent there is.

The developers who are able to answer your questions will most likely have enough experience and the required skill level you need for your project. The questions will also be used to determine the passion of the developer in programming. It is also a good way to determine their communication skills and how reliable they are. These interview questions enable you to hire the best PHP developer.

What is PHP?

PHP stands for hypertext preprocessor. It is a server-side scripting language that is used heavily in web development.

What is the difference between static and dynamic websites?

For static websites, the content cannot be changed after initializing the script. For dynamic websites, the content can be changed at any time and generated for each reload.

What is the use of “echo” in PHP?

Echo is a language construct that outputs a string.

What is a variable?

A variable is the name of a location in memory that holds data.

What is an array?

An array stores multiple values together. Key-value pairs are used to organize information that is stored in a collection.

Name the array types in PHP

There are three types of arrays in PHP namely:

• Indexed array
• Associative array
• Multidimensional array

How do you obtain the length of a string?

Using the strlen() function.

What methods are used to submit a form in PHP?

GET and POST.

Differentiate between a session and a cookie

A cookie gets stored on the user’s computer while sessions are located on the server.

What encryption functions are there in PHP?

CRYPT() and MD5()

What is HTACCESS in PHP?

It is a configuration file that is used to modify configuration settings on Apache servers.

What is meant by a persistent cookie?

The cookie is stored permanently inside a cookie file that is stored locally on the user’s computer. Typical cookies get erased once the browser is closed.

Explain the split() function

The PHP split() function makes use of a regular expression to split a string into an array.

Explain the explode() function

The explode() function in PHP breaks a string into an array.

How is the client’s IP address obtained in PHP?

Using the code: $_SERVER[“REMOTE_ADDR”];

How do you stop a PHP script from executing?

The exit() function halts any running PHP script.

List some PHP array functions.

• Array()
• Array_change_key_case()
• Array_chunk()
• Count()
• Sort()
• Array_reverse()
• Array_search()
• Array_intersect()

Name some loops in PHP

• For loop
• While loop
• Do-while loop
• For-each loop

What are magic constants?

These are predefined constants that change based on their usage.

List some popular PHP frameworks

• CodeIgniter
• CakePHP
• Yii 2
• Symfony
• Zend Framework

Getting the best PHP talent requires selecting only qualified programmers. Whenever you are hiring a PHP developer, you should arm yourself with questions. The questions will test the depth of understanding possessed by the developer. They will also gauge their familiarity with the constructs of the programming language. It will also demonstrate how familiar the developer is with the language.

For most projects, a good selection will ensure that the developer gets to complete tasks on time and integrate features that are required for your application. The questions narrow down your search to the very best talent there is available. It simplifies your hiring process and gets you skilled developers.