What is PHP?
PHP is a web language based on scripts that allow developers to dynamically create generated web pages.
What do the initials of PHP stand for?
PHP means PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.
Which programming language does PHP resemble?
PHP syntax resembles Perl and C
PHP Interview Questions
What does PEAR stand for?
PEAR means “PHP Extension and Application Repository”. It extends PHP and provides a higher level of programming for web developers.
What is the actually used PHP version?
Version 7.1 or 7.2 is the recommended version of PHP.
How do you execute a PHP script from the command line?
Just use the PHP command line interface (CLI) and specify the file name of the script to be executed as follows:
php script.phpAdvance PHP Interview Questions
How to run the interactive PHP shell from the command line interface?
Just use the PHP CLI program with the option -a as follows:
php -aWhat is the correct and the most two common way to start and finish a PHP block of code?
The two most common ways to start and finish a PHP script are:
<?php [ --- PHP code---- ] ?> and <? [--- PHP code ---] ?>How can we display the output directly to the browser?
To be able to display the output directly to the browser, we have to use the special tags <?= and ?>.
PHP Interview Questions
What is the main difference between PHP 4 and PHP 5?
PHP 5 presents many additional OOP (Object Oriented Programming) features.
Is multiple inheritance supported in PHP?
PHP supports only single inheritance; it means that a class can be extended from only one single class using the keyword ‘extended’.
What is the meaning of a final class and a final method?
‘final’ is introduced in PHP5. Final class means that this class cannot be extended and a final method cannot be overridden.
Advance PHP Interview Questions
How is the comparison of objects done in PHP?
We use the operator ‘==’ to test is two objects are instanced from the same class and have same attributes and equal values. We can test if two objects are referring to the same instance of the same class by the use of the identity operator ‘===’.
How can PHP and HTML interact?
It is possible to generate HTML through PHP scripts, and it is possible to pass pieces of information from HTML to PHP.
What type of operation is needed when passing values through a form or an URL?
If we would like to pass values through a form or an URL, then we need to encode and to decode them using htmlspecialchars() and urlencode().
PHP Interview Questions
How can PHP and Java script interact?
PHP and Java script cannot directly interact since PHP is a server side language and Java script is a client-side language. However, we can exchange variables since PHP can generate Java script code to be executed by the browser and it is possible to pass specific variables back to PHP via the URL.
What is needed to be able to use image function?
GD library is needed to execute image functions.
What is the use of the function ‘image types()’?
Image types() gives the image format and types supported by the current version of GD-PHP.
Advance PHP Interview Questions
What are the functions to be used to get the image’s properties (size, width, and height)?
The functions are getimagesize() for size, imagesx() for width and imagesy() for height.
How failures in execution are handled with include() and require() functions?
If the function require() cannot access the file then it ends with a fatal error. However, the include() function gives a warning, and the PHP script continues to execute.
What is the main difference between require() and require_once()?
Require(), and require once() perform the same task except that the second function checks if the PHP script is already included or not before executing it.
(same for include_once() and include())
PHP Interview Questions
How can I display text with a PHP script?
Two methods are possible:
<!--?php echo "Method 1"; print "Method 2"; ?-->How can we display information of a variable and readable by a human with PHP?
To be able to display a human-readable result we use print_r().
How is it possible to set an infinite execution time for PHP script?
The set_time_limit(0) added at the beginning of a script sets to infinite the time of execution to not have the PHP error ‘maximum execution time exceeded.’ It is also possible to specify this in the php.ini file.
Advance PHP Interview Questions
What does the PHP error ‘Parse error in PHP – unexpected T_variable at line x’ means?
This is a PHP syntax error expressing that a mistake at the line x stops parsing and executing the program.
What should we do to be able to export data into an Excel file?
The most common and used way is to get data into a format supported by Excel. For example, it is possible to write a .csv file, to choose for example comma as a separator between fields and then to open the file with Excel.
What is the function file_get_contents() useful for?
file_get_contents() lets reading a file and storing it in a string variable.
PHP Interview Questions
How can we connect to a MySQL database from a PHP script?
To be able to connect to a MySQL database, we must use mysqli_connect() function as follows:
<!--?php $database = mysqli_connect("HOST", "USER_NAME", "PASSWORD"); mysqli_select_db($database,"DATABASE_NAME"); ?-->What is the function mysql_pconnect() useful for?
mysql_pconnect() ensure a persistent connection to the database, it means that the connection does not close when the PHP script ends.
This function is not supported in PHP 7.0 and above
How be the result set of MySQL handled in PHP?
The result set can be handled using mysqli_fetch_array, mysqli_fetch_assoc, mysqli_fetch_object or mysqli_fetch_row.
Advance PHP Interview Questions
How is it possible to know the number of rows returned in the result set?
The function mysqli_num_rows() returns the number of rows in a result set.
Which function gives us the number of affected entries by a query?
Mysqli_affected_rows() return the number of entries affected by an SQL query.
What is the difference between mysqli_fetch_object() and mysqli_fetch_array()?
The mysqli_fetch_object() function collects the first single matching record where mysqli_fetch_array() collects all matching records from the table in an array.
PHP Interview Questions
How can we access the data sent through the URL with the GET method?
To access the data sent via the GET method, we use $_GET array like this:
www.url.com?var=value
$variable = $_GET["var"]; this will now contain 'value'How can we access the data sent through the URL with the POST method?
To access the data sent this way, you use the $_POST array.
Imagine you have a form field called ‘var’ on the form when the user clicks submit to the post form, you can then access the value like this:
$_POST["var"];How can we check the value of a given variable is a number?
It is possible to use the dedicated function, is numeric () to check whether it is a number or not.
Advance PHP Interview Questions
How can we check the value of a given variable is alphanumeric?
It is possible to use the dedicated function, ctype_alnum to check whether it is an alphanumeric value or not.
How do I check if a given variable is empty?
If we want to check whether a variable has a value or not, it is possible to use the empty() function.
What does the unlink() function mean?
The unlink() function is dedicated for file system handling. It simply deletes the file given as entry.
PHP Interview Questions
What does the unset() function mean?
The unset() function is dedicated for variable management. It will make a variable undefined.
How do I escape data before storing it in the database?
The add slashes function enables us to escape data before storage into the database.
How is it possible to remove escape characters from a string?
The stripslashes function enables us to remove the escape characters before apostrophes in a string.
Advance PHP Interview Questions
How can we automatically escape incoming data?
We have to enable the Magic quotes entry in the configuration file of PHP.
What does the function get_magic_quotes_gpc() means?
The function get_magic_quotes_gpc() tells us whether the magic quotes is switched on or no.
Is it possible to remove the HTML tags from data?
The strip_tags() function enables us to clean a string from the HTML tags.
PHP Interview Questions
What is the static variable in function useful for?
A static variable is defined within a function only the first time, and its value can be modified during function calls as follows:
<!--?php function testFunction() { static $testVariable = 1; echo $testVariable; $testVariable++; } testFunction(); //1 testFunction(); //2 testFunction(); //3 ?-->How can we define a variable accessible in functions of a PHP script?
This feature is possible using the global keyword.
How is it possible to return a value from a function?
A function returns a value using the instruction ‘return $value;’.
Advance PHP Interview Questions
What is the most convenient hashing method to be used to hash passwords?
It is preferable to use crypt() which natively supports several hashing algorithms or the function hash() which supports more variants than crypt() rather than using the common hashing algorithms such as md5, sha1 or sha256 because they are conceived to be fast. Hence, hashing passwords with these algorithms can create vulnerability.
Which cryptographic extension provide generation and verification of digital signatures?
The PHP-OpenSSL extension provides several cryptographic operations including generation and verification of digital signatures.
