php interview questions
Top php frequently asked interview questions
I'm setting up a new server, and want to support UTF-8 fully in my web application. I have tried in the past on existing servers and always seem to end up having to fall back to ISO-8859-1.
Where exactly do I need to set the encoding/charsets? I'm aware that I need to configure Apache, MySQL and PHP to do this - is there some standard checklist I can follow, or perhaps troubleshoot where the mismatches occur?
This is for a new Linux server, running MySQL 5, PHP 5 and Apache 2.
Source: (StackOverflow)
How can I get the client IP address using PHP?
I want to keep record of the user who logged into my website through his/her IP address.
Source: (StackOverflow)
What is this?
This is a number of answers about warnings, errors and notices you might encounter while programming PHP and have no clue how to fix. This is also a Community Wiki, so everyone is invited to participate in adding to and maintaining this list.
Why is this?
Questions like "Headers already sent" or "Calling a member of a non-object" pop up frequently on Stack Overflow. The root cause of those questions is always the same. So the answers to those questions typically repeat them and then show the OP which line to change in his/her particular case. These answers do not add any value to the site because they only apply to the OP's particular code. Other users having the same error can not easily read the solution out of it because they are too localized. That is sad, because once you understood the root cause, fixing the error is trivial. Hence, this list tries to explain the solution in a general way to apply.
What should I do here?
If your question has been marked as a duplicate of this, please find your error message below and apply the fix to your code. The answers usually contain further links to investigate in case it shouldn't be clear from the general answer alone.
If you want to contribute, please add your "favorite" error message, warning or notice, one per answer, a short description what it means (even if it is only highlighting terms to their manual page), a possible solution or debugging approach and a listing of existing Q&A that are of value. Also, feel free to improve any existing answers.
The List
Also see
Source: (StackOverflow)
When running my script, I am getting several errors like this:
Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /some/file.php:12) in /some/file.php on line 23
The lines mentioned in the error messages contain header() and setcookie() calls.
What could be the reason for this? And how to fix it?
Source: (StackOverflow)
Let me prefix this by saying that I know what foreach is, does and how to use it. This question concerns how it works under the bonnet, and I don't want any answers along the lines of "this is how you loop an array with foreach".
For a long time I assumed that foreach worked with the array itself. Then I found many references to the fact that it works with a copy of the array, and I have since assumed this to be the end of the story. But I recently got into a discussion on the matter, and after a little experimentation found that this was not in fact 100% true.
Let me show what I mean. For the following test cases, we will be working with the following array:
$array = array(1, 2, 3, 4, 5);
Test case 1:
foreach ($array as $item) {
echo "$item\n";
$array[] = $item;
}
print_r($array);
/* Output in loop: 1 2 3 4 5
$array after loop: 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 */
This clearly shows that we are not working directly with the source array - otherwise the loop would continue forever, since we are constantly pushing items onto the array during the loop. But just to be sure this is the case:
Test case 2:
foreach ($array as $key => $item) {
$array[$key + 1] = $item + 2;
echo "$item\n";
}
print_r($array);
/* Output in loop: 1 2 3 4 5
$array after loop: 1 3 4 5 6 7 */
This backs up our initial conclusion, we are working with a copy of the source array during the loop, otherwise we would see the modified values during the loop. But...
If we look in the manual, we find this statement:
When foreach first starts executing, the internal array pointer is automatically reset to the first element of the array.
Right... this seems to suggest that foreach relies on the array pointer of the source array. But we've just proved that we're not working with the source array, right? Well, not entirely.
Test case 3:
// Move the array pointer on one to make sure it doesn't affect the loop
var_dump(each($array));
foreach ($array as $item) {
echo "$item\n";
}
var_dump(each($array));
/* Output
array(4) {
[1]=>
int(1)
["value"]=>
int(1)
[0]=>
int(0)
["key"]=>
int(0)
}
1
2
3
4
5
bool(false)
*/
So, despite the fact that we are not working directly with the source array, we are working directly with the source array pointer - the fact that the pointer is at the end of the array at the end of the loop shows this. Except this can't be true - if it was, then test case 1 would loop forever.
The PHP manual also states:
As foreach relies on the internal array pointer changing it within the loop may lead to unexpected behavior.
Well, let's find out what that "unexpected behavior" is (technically, any behavior is unexpected since I no longer know what to expect).
Test case 4:
foreach ($array as $key => $item) {
echo "$item\n";
each($array);
}
/* Output: 1 2 3 4 5 */
Test case 5:
foreach ($array as $key => $item) {
echo "$item\n";
reset($array);
}
/* Output: 1 2 3 4 5 */
...nothing that unexpected there, in fact it seems to support the "copy of source" theory.
The Question
What is going on here? My C-fu is not good enough for me to able to extract a proper conclusion simply by looking at the PHP source code, I would appreciate it if someone could translate it into English for me.
It seems to me that foreach works with a copy of the array, but sets the array pointer of the source array to the end of the array after the loop.
- Is this correct and the whole story?
- If not, what is it really doing?
- Is there any situation where using functions that adjust the array pointer (
each(), reset() et al.) during a foreach could affect the outcome of the loop?
Source: (StackOverflow)
Is there an easy way to delete an element from a PHP array, such that foreach ($array) no longer includes that element?
I thought that setting it to null would do it, but apparently not.
Source: (StackOverflow)
If I have a YouTube video URL, is there any way to use PHP and cURL to get the associated thumbnail from the YouTube API?
Source: (StackOverflow)
I am trying to select data from a MySQL table, but I get one of the following error messages:
mysql_fetch_array() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given
or
mysqli_fetch_array() expects parameter 1 to be mysqli_result, boolean given
This is my code:
$username = $_POST['username'];
$password = $_POST['password'];
$result = mysql_query('SELECT * FROM Users WHERE UserName LIKE $username');
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
echo $row['FirstName'];
}
The same applies to code like
$result = mysqli_query($mysqli, 'SLECT ...');
// mysqli_fetch_array() expects parameter 1 to be mysqli_result, boolean given
while( $row=mysqli_fetch_array($result) ) {
...
and
$result = $mysqli->query($mysqli, 'SELCT ...');
// Call to a member function fetch_assoc() on a non-object
while( $row=$result->fetch_assoc($result) ) {
...
and
$result = $pdo->query('SLECT ...', PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
// Invalid argument supplied for foreach()
foreach( $result as $row ) {
...
and
$stmt = $mysqli->prepare('SLECT ...');
// Call to a member function bind_param() on a non-object
$stmt->bind_param(...)
and
$stmt = $pdo->prepare('SLECT ...');
// Call to a member function bindParam() on a non-object
$stmt->bindParam(...)
Source: (StackOverflow)
I have tried reading some articles, but I am not very clear on the concepts yet.
Would someone like to take a shot at explaining to me what these technologies are:
- Long Polling
- Server-Sent Event
- Websockets
- Comet
One thing that I came across every time was, the server keeps a connection open and pushes data to the client. How is the connection kept open, and how does the client get the pushed data? (how does the client use the data, maybe some code might help?)
Now, which one of them should I use for a real-time app. I have been hearing a lot about websockets (with socket.io [a node.js library]) but why not PHP?
Source: (StackOverflow)
I can find lots of information on how Long Polling works (For example, this, and this), but no simple examples of how to implement this in code.
All I can find is cometd, which relies on the Dojo JS framework, and a fairly complex server system..
Basically, how would I use Apache to serve the requests, and how would I write a simple script (say, in PHP) which would "long-poll" the server for new messages?
The example doesn't have to be scaleable, secure or complete, it just needs to work!
Source: (StackOverflow)