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Are there any good free PHP competency tests out there? It's easy for someone to say they code in PHP, but depth and understanding of how lowerlevel parts of the language are parsed and executed is much different.

Something that asks good questions, perhaps elicit the person to write some sample code solutions to particular problems.

Ideas?

LittleBobbyTables - Au Revoir
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Spot
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    Are you going to create your own competency test? Or to use some online service? If second, I can suggest http://tests4geeks.com They have PHP test and combined PHP + MySQL test. – Vadim Mar 31 '13 at 14:17
  • You can check this [PHP Online Test](http://codelect.net/TestDetails/PHP%20test%20for%20Seniors) where you can create your test bsed on a mix of PHP topics and difficulty. CodeIgniter is also there – Uri Lukach May 26 '13 at 16:48
  • I prefer you buy available online scripts in market as starting point for it. This will save you time, cost and testing efforts. Below is one of the fine scripts that I worked with and it worked like charm. Using this as base I developed a online testing portal of over 1000 users using computer adaptive test. http://codecanyon.net/item/online-skills-assessment/9379895 It is a good starting point for people looking to develop Online Exam System. I customized the script with the help of their support. – vipul_surana Dec 02 '14 at 10:12

6 Answers6

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Ask them to write an absolutely trivial ‘Hello, $name!’ example that also stores the user-input names to a database.

If they manage to do it without HTML-injection or SQL-injection security holes you've already got someone in top ten percent of PHP coders. If they manage to include proper indenting and maybe a comment then wow! It's a superstar.

I'm not even joking.

bobince
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    +1 for helping me realize that I'm in the bottom 90%. – John Jan 15 '10 at 22:43
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    Reminds me of the [fizzbuzz problem](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/02/why-cant-programmers-program.html). –  Jun 10 '11 at 01:52
  • This is a real good answer. The best thing about this test is that it weeds out the people who don't care from those who do. Getting someone who cares is worth much more than someone who is skilled... to a degree. – John Hunt Jun 04 '13 at 09:19
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Check out these questions:

Community
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Pekka
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3

A certification is pretty much a test.

Check out the ZEND certification for PHP.

http://www.zend.com/services/certification/

edit:

Here is free resource: PHP Interview Questions and Answers.

http://www.techinterviews.com/php-interview-questions-and-answers

Yada
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  • I think the OP mentioned "free" too. :-P – C. K. Young Jan 15 '10 at 21:36
  • This does not work for us. We are a startup and need something that we can send people to first step, to help weed out those that do not have enough experience, etc. Thanks for the suggestion however. – Spot Jan 15 '10 at 21:38
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    Certifications re great if you want to hire someone to pass certification tests for you. – Alana Storm Jan 15 '10 at 21:47
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    As a ZCE, I would personally be think that someone who's willing to throw down over $100 of their own money to prove they know what's-what about PHP is probably good, but I might be biased =P. I think most of the ZCEs have spent their own money as the cert is mostly useful for landing interviews and jobs, so few employers are willing to drop cash to help you leave their company. I will also concede, though, that the actual *content* of the PHP exam was, in almost all cases (except security) irrelevant, and related to your ability to read-and-eval code which I would call "academic" at best. – Dereleased Jan 16 '10 at 02:46
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In the Stackoverflow podcast #79 a service called Codility came up:

There is a website that conducts programming tests on the internet for you at Codility, but we’re skeptical this can actually work without the one-on-one human element of observation.
I think it's probably as good as such automated tests can be but agree on the missing human element. It was more fun to solve the test problem in the worst manner that still gets you a score of 100 than to solve it as fast/good/elegant as possible. edit: oh, and it's not for free...
Community
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VolkerK
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  • This is a good way to see what you do/don't know and so you know what you need to study before going out and interviewing. One of the Codility tests was sent to me by a potential employer in my second round of interviews... So that makes taking their tutorials en even better idea. – Justin Jun 24 '13 at 23:45
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http://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school

Timed tests. Hard questions. Not just multiple choice but short essay too. Make your own or choose from large list of created one s.

I happened to find it last night. I took a C# test. Man, do I need to study more!

bekind
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Google for "Zend Mock Exam Questions". This will bring up results like this forum thread with questions from the online Mock Exams that are supposed to prepare you for the Zend Certified Engineer exam.

However, if you send applicants questions like this, there is very little that would hinder them from simply googling the answers though, so I find little value in that. Basically, if you got an idea what you are looking for in your applicants, you should be able to ask them the right questions.

Gordon
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