Hi, We're hiring a part time someone for customer services but with the necessity of having PHP writing skills. But there seems to be a difference between people having echoed 'hello world' once and actually being able to write for real. To seperate the boys from the men I thought I'd just present them with what would be a 15 minute task for me to program in html/php. If they can't do it in half an hour, they'd be out. What would be an acceptable level of knowledge if you're just after a part time student 20-28 years old? I was thinking of having them make a html form with a pull down list with number 1-12 made by a for loop in php plus a text input. Then submit this to a form handler which echoes the submitted word and selected number. This should take no more than 15 minutes (plain text) IMO and shows basic php skills. Dynamic pages are all about form and form handling so this should be a good test shouldn't it? What do you think? Easy? Harsh?
I am just about to ask my programmers to do the same thing. We are hiring a new PHP coder. I think your test is easy for anyone with genuine PHP experience, i might steal it and use it myself
Thanks This was the best one I could think of that wouldn't take long and does ask for some basic - off the top of their head - problem solving which is almost guaranteed to come up in a real life situation.
T0PS3O: Maybe you should try to check mySQL skills to? Like ask them to list something from database add search form and sort. Should be 15 for SKILLed PHPer
This would seperate the boys from the babies I could do that in 5 minutes easy... aside from the fact that I haven't used for often. Josh
I think the best test for a php coder would be to give them a few pages of code after you have messed them up and ask them to find and fix the errors.
/me loves fixing up broken php scripts If you really wanted to do a decent test, just ask them to write a basic email script, that gets a users name, email, comment, etc, sends an email to a specified address, and as a bonus or something logs it to a database. Josh
this sounds too easy for a real php test. the problem here is that people like me, who really know nothing about PHP, can apply the fundametals from another language like C# with just a basic synthatic understanding of a few php functions. 20 minutes with a good web tutorial and you could fake this, easy.
heh how about this? the test would be to code a simple news script with mysql... that shows the 10 newest news posts subjects with date and also allows you to post, edit or delete posts through an admin like ie. news.php?user=admin (simple with no security) basically it would show some general knowledge of php with loops, form handling, sql stmts and the like.... heh maybe might take too much time for a novice coder but someone with decent skills should be able to do it within 10-30 minutes. just an idea...
I like the e-mail idea, still using forms and quite a common thing. We're after a student so wouldn't demand too advanced stuff. I also don't want to spend hourse preparing the test or give them DB passwords etc. right away hence not including database stuff. Could perhaps do some file writing. I know the one I proposed is easy and basic but at least it's quick and do-able. And if they do complete it in half an hour (without going online) then I know for definite they can read and write PHP, no matter how simple this is. If they know the basic stuff by heart I don't mind they have php.net open on their PC 24/7. I only know 10% of the stuff by heart as well, the rest I keep having to use references for. No problem as long as you know the basics and know how to use php.net. Fixing an existing script is also a very good idea, thanks. Debugging is always an essential part, deleting some closing tags, adding some 's and altering some stuff to dodgy code will give them a nice screen full of errors. Delete a </td> somewhere as well and tell them to get it validating again. Thanks for the ideas.
You could also give them some interactive scripts and ask them to add the code nessary to test and validate user input to make the scripts secure from hackers.
I`m a jobless PHP programmer :-I Where can I apply? I think something which involves mySql would be good.. something like a "news" script for a portal which would list news topics and also allow you to add links.. this too shouldnt take more than 15 minutes... By the way - I was serious in the first line :-I I really am jobless
I could use a part time PHP coding job myself. Why not just ask them to show you something they've already written? Any idiot can write a form managing routine. If they've gotten something that's a few hundred lines long you can see if they not only know php, but how to use it.