Are you looking to update your PHP programming knowledge or need to prepare for a job interview? Check out this collection of PHP Interview Questions and Answers.
1. What’s the difference between include and require?
Answer: It’s how they handle failures. If the file is not found by require(), it will cause a fatal error and halt the execution of the script. If the file is not found by include(), a warning will be issued, but execution will continue.
2. When you assign a variable the value of 0123, it keeps coming up with a different number, why?
Answer: PHP Interpreter treats numbers beginning with 0 as octal.
3. Would you use print "$a dollars" or "{$a} dollars" to print out the amount of dollars in this example?
Answer: In this example it wouldn’t matter, since the variable is all by itself, but if you were to print something like "{$a},000,000 mln dollars", then you definitely need to use the braces.
4. How do you define a constant?
Answer: Constants in PHP are defined using define() directive, like define("MYCONSTANT", 100);
5. How do you pass a variable by value in PHP?
Answer: Just like in C++, put an ampersand in front of it, like $a = &$b;
6. Will comparison of string "10" and integer 11 work in PHP?
Answer: Yes, internally PHP will cast everything to the integer type, so numbers 10 and 11 will be compared.
7. When are you supposed to use endif to end the conditional statement?
Answer: When the original if was followed by : and then the code block without braces.
8. Explain the ternary conditional operator in PHP?
Answer: Expression preceding the ? is evaluated, if it’s true, then the expression preceding the : is executed, otherwise, the expression following : is executed.
9. How do I find out the number of parameters passed into function in PHP?
Answer: func_num_args() function returns the number of parameters/arguments passed to a function in PHP.
10. If the variable $a is equal to 5 and variable $b is equal to character a, what’s the value of $$b?
Answer: 100, it’s a reference to existing variable.
11. What’s the difference between accessing a class method via -> and via ::?
Answer: In PHP, :: is allowed to access methods that can perform static operations, i.e. those, which do not require object initialization.
12. Are objects passed by value or by reference?
Answer: Everything is passed by value. In PHP4 it's true, BUT in PHP5 absolutely not - all objects are passed by reference.
13. How do you call a constructor for a parent class?
Answer: parent::constructor($value)
14. What’s the special meaning of __sleep and __wakeup?
Answer: __sleep returns the array of all the variables than need to be saved, while __wakeup retrieves them.
15. Would you initialize your strings with single quotes or double quotes in PHP?
Answer: Since the data inside the single-quoted string is not parsed for variable substitution, it’s always a better idea speed-wise to initialize a string with single quotes, unless you specifically need variable substitution.
16. I am writing an application in PHP that outputs a printable version of driving directions. It contains some long sentences, and I am a neat freak, and would like to make sure that no line exceeds 50 characters. How do I accomplish that with PHP?
Answer: On large strings that need to be formatted according to some length specifications, use wordwrap() or chunk_split().
17. What’s the output of the ucwords() function in the example below?
$formatted = ucwords("THIS COLLECTION OF PHP INTERVIEW QUESTIONS");
print $formatted;
Answer: Output will be THIS IS COLLECTION OF PHP INTERVIEW QUESTIONS. ucwords() makes every first letter of every word capital, but it does not lower-case anything else. To avoid this, and get a properly formatted string, it’s worth using strtolower() first.
18. What’s the difference between htmlentities() and htmlspecialchars()?
Answer: htmlspecialchars only takes care of <, >, single quote ‘, double quote " and ampersand. htmlentities translates all occurrences of character sequences that have different meaning in HTML.
19. What’s the difference between md5(), crc32() and sha1() crypto on PHP?
Answer: The major difference is the length of the hash generated. CRC32 is, evidently, 32 bits, while sha1() returns a 128 bit value, and md5() returns a 160 bit value. This is important when avoiding collisions.
20. If md5() generates the most secure hash, why would you ever use the less secure crc32() and sha1()?
Answer: Crypto usage in PHP is simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s free. First off, depending on the data that you’re encrypting, you might have reasons to store a 32-bit value in the database instead of the 160-bit value to save on space. Second, the more secure the crypto is, the longer is the computation time to deliver the hash value. A high volume site might be significantly slowed down, if frequent md5() generation is required.
