PHP and Laravel interview study guide
A gap-driven study source for an experienced developer who wants to attach precise names and mental models to existing practice, correct inaccurate intuitions, and prepare for regular and senior PHP/Laravel interviews.
The site is the product: curated study material, interview questions, example answers, and realistic exercises. It is not a linear course, beginner tutorial, grading system, progress tracker, or personalized practice application. Start from a question, misconception, or weak area and follow the relevant topic. Pages prioritize mechanisms, distinctions, trade-offs, failure modes, and interview prompts over exhaustive API coverage.
Start here
Section titled “Start here”- Read How to use this repository.
- Use the Knowledge-gap audit to select topics.
- Choose a focused route from Study routes.
- Rehearse with the Interview question bank.
- Check the Version and compatibility guide before relying on version-sensitive details.
- For repository expansion work, follow the Content authoring standard and Content expansion roadmap.
- PHP type system and language semantics — complete
- PHP object model — complete
- PHP functions, closures, and callables — complete
- PHP arrays, values, and comparison — complete
- PHP errors, exceptions, and shutdown behavior — complete
- PHP runtime, memory, OPcache, and process models — complete
- Composer, autoloading, and PHP standards — complete
- Modern and legacy PHP — complete
Laravel
Section titled “Laravel”- Laravel framework foundations — complete
- Laravel request lifecycle, container, providers, and facades — complete
- Laravel routing, middleware, and model binding — complete
- Laravel validation, authorization, policies, and tenant boundaries — complete
- Eloquent model mechanics — complete
- Eloquent relationships and loading — complete
- Laravel authentication and API security — complete
- Laravel cache, sessions, and Redis integration — complete
- Laravel filesystem, uploads, and object storage — complete
- Laravel queues, events, listeners, notifications, and retries — complete
- Laravel configuration, exception handling, and logging — complete
- Testing Laravel applications — complete
- Laravel Artisan commands and task scheduling — complete
- Laravel deployment and long-running workers — complete
Engineering
Section titled “Engineering”- Data structures, complexity, and the real bottleneck — complete
- Concurrency, processes, and asynchronous I/O — complete
- HTTP, networking, and web boundaries — complete
- HTTP and API design — complete
- Databases, indexes, and concurrency — complete
- Cache and Redis reasoning — complete
- Distributed delivery and reliability — complete
- Testing and software quality — complete
- Application and operational security — complete
- Performance, capacity, and scalability — complete
- Software design — complete
- Architecture and domain-driven design — complete
- Deployment and release engineering — complete
- Observability and incident response — complete
- Technical leadership — complete
- System design — complete
Scenario practice and interview exercises
Section titled “Scenario practice and interview exercises”- Interview answer frameworks
- Interview question bank
- PHP interview questions
- Laravel interview questions
- Backend-engineering interview questions
- Database and distributed-systems interview questions
- Senior engineering, architecture, and leadership interview questions
- Debugging scenarios — complete exercise collection
- Code-review scenarios — complete exercise collection
- Exercise: review this checkout flow
- System-design and implementation scenarios — complete exercise collection
Reference and optional material
Section titled “Reference and optional material”- Terminology glossary — complete
- Commonly confused concepts — complete
- Primary-source map — complete
- Example index
- Frontend knowledge for Laravel developers — optional complete
- AI-assisted development — optional complete
Content standard
Section titled “Content standard”When expanding a page, prefer this sequence:
- Precise definition
- Mechanism
- Common confusion
- Production consequence or failure mode
- Alternatives and trade-offs
- Version or legacy context where relevant
- Precision, diagnosis, and decision interview prompts
Basics may be linked rather than retaught. A page should explain enough to correct a mental model, not duplicate official documentation.
Source policy
Section titled “Source policy”Claims that can age should link to primary documentation. Timeless concepts can be summarized without citation clutter. See the version and compatibility guide and primary-source map.
Static site
Section titled “Static site”The repository includes an Astro Starlight site generated from these Markdown files. The root content directories remain the canonical source; npm run sync:content creates ignored, Starlight-ready copies under src/content/docs.
npm installnpm run devRun npm run check to validate the Astro project and npm run build to generate the static site in dist/ and verify its local links. Any static host can serve that directory. Set SITE_URL to the deployed origin to generate a sitemap and canonical metadata.
Search indexing is disabled by default for semi-public deployments. Set INDEX_SITE=true during the production build to allow indexing, for example SITE_URL=https://reference.example.com INDEX_SITE=true npm run build.