Skip to content
PHP & Laravel Interview Reference

Interview question bank

This page is an index and a set of curated mock interviews. Questions live in one canonical topical bank so their wording, stable ID, and example answer stay together.

Canonical banks

Section titled “Canonical banks”

Older topical banks contain seed prompts without IDs. Each prompt becomes canonical and receives an answer when its owning reference bundle is completed. For response structure, see answer frameworks.

Mock interview set 1 — Laravel foundations

Section titled “Mock interview set 1 — Laravel foundations”

Use four questions for a 30-minute screen or all six for a deeper session. Do not read the collapsible examples until after answering aloud.

  1. LARAVEL-LIFECYCLE-01 — Trace a Laravel web request
  2. LARAVEL-LIFECYCLE-02 — Explain zero-configuration resolution
  3. LARAVEL-LIFECYCLE-03 — Separate provider registration from booting
  4. LARAVEL-LIFECYCLE-04 — Explain what a facade invokes
  5. LARAVEL-LIFECYCLE-05 — Diagnose cross-request state leakage
  6. LARAVEL-LIFECYCLE-06 — Choose injection, a facade, or service location

Mock interview set 2 — Laravel routing boundaries

Section titled “Mock interview set 2 — Laravel routing boundaries”

Use questions 1–4 for a framework screen; add 5–6 for production diagnosis and design depth.

  1. LARAVEL-ROUTING-01 — Trace route selection and dispatch
  2. LARAVEL-ROUTING-02 — Explain final middleware order
  3. LARAVEL-ROUTING-03 — Explain implicit model binding
  4. LARAVEL-ROUTING-04 — Separate scoped binding from authorization
  5. LARAVEL-ROUTING-05 — Diagnose a production-only routing failure
  6. LARAVEL-ROUTING-06 — Choose a boundary mechanism

Mock interview set 3 — Laravel trust boundaries

Section titled “Mock interview set 3 — Laravel trust boundaries”

Use questions 1–3 for framework precision; add 4–6 for senior security and failure reasoning.

  1. LARAVEL-BOUNDARIES-01 — Trace a Form Request
  2. LARAVEL-BOUNDARIES-02 — Separate validation from invariants
  3. LARAVEL-BOUNDARIES-03 — Choose a gate or policy
  4. LARAVEL-BOUNDARIES-04 — Design tenant isolation
  5. LARAVEL-BOUNDARIES-05 — Diagnose an unsafe queued export
  6. LARAVEL-BOUNDARIES-06 — Choose denial semantics

Mock interview set 4 — Complexity and bottlenecks

Section titled “Mock interview set 4 — Complexity and bottlenecks”

Use questions 1–3 for core reasoning; add 4–6 for production diagnosis and senior trade-offs.

  1. BACKEND-FUNDAMENTALS-01 — Explain why Big O is not a stopwatch
  2. BACKEND-FUNDAMENTALS-02 — Replace repeated scans without changing semantics
  3. BACKEND-FUNDAMENTALS-03 — Choose a structure from the workload
  4. BACKEND-FUNDAMENTALS-04 — Diagnose an apparently linear endpoint
  5. BACKEND-FUNDAMENTALS-05 — Reason about time, space, and boundaries
  6. BACKEND-FUNDAMENTALS-06 — Prove the real bottleneck

Scenario practice

Section titled “Scenario practice”

Questions for the employer

Section titled “Questions for the employer”
  • Which correctness or operational problems consume the most engineering time?
  • How are architecture decisions made and revisited?
  • What does ownership include after code reaches production?
  • How are tests, static analysis, deployment, and rollback handled?
  • What distinguishes strong performance at regular and senior levels here?