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Interview Questions

published by Diego F. Roldán on Wed, 03/16/2011 - 17:22

These are some of the most common questions I have been asked and ask myself on interviews for LAMP positions. I will update these questions and possibly answer some of them on my spare time.

Something important: If you mention knowing something on your resume, expect to be asked about it.

Drupal

Note taking questions.

  • Are you comfortable working on both Drupal 6 and Drupal 7?
  • Are you stronger doing Drupal frontend, or Drupal backend?
  • What you don't like about Drupal?
  • Have you ever contributed a module to the community? If yes, for which modules?
  • Are you familiar with CCK, Views, Panels, Features, Services? How have you used them before?

Full answer questions.

  • In which language is Drupal written?

    • This tells me whether the person is aware of the existence of PHP. To me it matters and saves me time.

    Answer

    PHP
  • What are Drupal hooks?

    • Answer

    * Allow modules to interact with the Drupal core.
    * Modules can implement a hook to extend Drupal.
  • Which hook would I use to define a new menu item and page callbacks? e.g. Say I need to register a new URL path that simply prints out "hello world!"

    • Answer

    hook_menu().
  • How can I prevent SQL injection attacks in Drupal?

    • Answer

    By correctly using the database abstraction layer.
  • If you write a SQL statement that refers to nodes, which function do you use to respect node access restrictions?

    • Answer

    db_rewrite_sql().

General Drupal Performance

  • Name some modules that should not be enabled on a production server?

    • Answer

    * Developer module (a.k.a Devel).
    * DB logging module (a.k.a DBLog).

MySQL

  • What is the difference between a LEFT, RIGHT and INNER JOIN?

    • Answer

    * LEFT JOIN  returns items from the left table even if there isn't a match on the table that it is being joined to.
    * RIGHT JOIN  this is the opposite of LEFT JOIN
    * INNER JOIN returns rows when there is at least one match in both the tables.
  • What is an INDEX?
  • What is the difference between a PRIMARY KEY and a UNIQUE KEY?

PHP

  • In which language is PHP written?

    • Answer

    C
  • Given an array of unsorted vocabulary words, how would you sort this array by performing a Quicksort sorting algorithm?

    • Answer

    You can use the PHP sort() function.
  • What's the idea behind type casting?

    • Answer

    Allows to change one type of data into another. e.g. An integer to string.

Object Oriented Programming (OOP)

  • What are the major principles of OOP?

    • Answer

    * Polymorphism
    * Inheritance
    * Encapsulation
  • What is the difference between an Abstract Class and an Interface?

    • Answer

    * Interface defines method signatures with no code or defined functionality.
    * An Interface is not a class, is an entity.
    * Abstract class can have both complete and incomplete methods.
    * A class can inherit multiple interfaces, but only 1 abstract class.
    * A class implementing an interface MUST override all the signature methods.
  • What is the difference between Public/Private/Protected class properties?

    • Answer

    * Public class properties (a.k.a variables), are properties that are visible to all classes.
    * Private variables, are variables that are visible only to the class to which they belong.
    * Protected variables, are variables that are visible only to the class to which they belong, and any subclasses.

Caching

  • How would you use Memcache?
  • Are you familiar with Alternative PHP Caching (APC)? How does it work?
  • Are you familiar with Akamai/Varnish? What does it do to improve performance?

Internet Security

  • What is SQL injection?
  • What is XSS?

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