Top Laravel Interview Questions Asked by Leading Companies in 2023

Answer: MVC stands for Model-View-Controller. In Laravel, Models represent the data. Views handle the presentation logic, and Controllers manage the application's flow by handling requests and responses.

Let's understand through below work flow:

Answer: Composer is a dependency manager for PHP. In Laravel, it's used to manage packages and dependencies, which makes it easier to include third-party libraries and tools into your project.

Answer: Blade is Laravel's templating engine. It offers features like template inheritance and sections. Blade templates are compiled into efficient PHP code. It makes them faster than regular PHP templates.

The Blade templating engine provides structure, such as conditional statements and loops. To create a blade template, simply you need to create a view file and save it with a .blade extension. The blade templates are stored in the /resources/views directory in Laravel.

Answer: Migrations in Laravel are used to manage database schemas. They allow you to create and modify database tables using code. By using this you can control the version of the schema and collaborate on database changes.

You can add new migrations and update the existing ones as well.

Example:

php artisan make:migration create_users_table

This will generate a new migration for the Users table. Similarly, you can create another migration to change/update the schema of any existing table or add new columns to any table.

Example:

php artisan make:migration add_column_alternate_phone_in_users_table --table=users

Answer: The latest version of Laravel is Laravel 10. It was launched on February 14th, 2023. It supports PHP version 8.1 - 8.2.

Currently, Laravel provides first-party support for the below five databases.

Answer: User authentication is the process of verifying the identity of a user. It ensures that they are who they claim to be, and grants access to specific resources or functionalities within an application based on their identity. User authentication is a fundamental component of many applications, as it enables users to have personalized experiences, secure access to their accounts, and perform actions that are restricted to authorized individuals.

Laravel provides an Artisan command to generate auth scaffolding. But it requires Laravel UI packages.

composer require laravel/ui

It supports different types of auth scaffolding such are:

1. Bootstrap
2. React and 
3. Vue

Also, you will have to apply the built-in auth middleware in the routes for preventing un-authorized URL accessing.

Answer: Laravel CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery) protection is a security feature that helps protect your web application from CSRF attacks. CSRF attacks occur when a malicious website tricks a user's browser into performing unwanted actions on another website where the user is authenticated.

Laravel's CSRF protection prevents these attacks by ensuring that requests to your application come from trusted sources. The csrf middleware generates and validates these tokens in forms and AJAX requests as well.

Example:

<form method="POST" action="{{ route('example') }}">
   @csrf <!-- Generates the CSRF token field -->
   <!-- Other form fields -->
</form>

Answer: In Laravel, Artisan is the command-line tool that comes bundled with the framework. It provides a wide range of helpful commands for various tasks related to Laravel application development. Artisan simplifies common development tasks and allows developers to perform tasks such as generating boilerplate code, managing database migrations, and running tests from the command line.

Here are a few examples of Artisan commands:

• php artisan make:controller MyController generates a new controller.
• php artisan make:migration create_table_name creates a new database migration.
• php artisan migrate runs pending database migrations.
• php artisan db:seed runs database seeders.
• php artisan tinker starts the Tinker REPL.
• php artisan make:middleware CustomMiddleware runs PHPUnit tests. etc.

Answer: The .env file in Laravel contains environment-specific configuration settings, such as database connection details and application keys, email configurations, and many more. It allows you to configure your application for different environments (e.g., development, production).

Answer: In Laravel, you can access variables defined in the .env file using the env function or by directly using the $_ENV superglobal. Here's how you can do it.

Using the env() function:

$variable = env('VARIABLE_NAME', 'default_value');

• Replace VARIABLE_NAME with the name of the variable you want to access.
• If the variable is not found in the .env file, Laravel will use the default_value one you specify.

Using the $_ENV Superglobal:

$variable = $_ENV['VARIABLE_NAME'];

Answer: In Laravel, you can enable maintenance mode to display a "503 Service Unavailable" message to users while you perform maintenance or updates on your application. During maintenance mode, a temporary maintenance file is created to inform users that the application is not available.

Run the following Artisan command to enable maintenance mode:

php artisan down

php artisan up

Answer: The yield directive is used within Blade templates to define a section of content that can be overridden or replaced by child views that extend the parent view. It's a fundamental part of Laravel's templating system and provides a way to structure and organize your views efficiently.

Here's how the yield directive works:

<!-- parent.blade.php -->
<html>
  <head>
    <title>@yield('title')</title>
  </head>
<body>
  <div class="container">
      @yield('content')
  </div>
</body>
</html>

In Child blade, you will have to extend the parent blade as shown below.

<!-- child.blade.php -->
@extends('parent')
@section('title', 'Page Title')

@section('content')
   <p>This is the content of the page.</p>
@endsection

Answer: In Laravel, accessors and mutators are used to manipulate the attributes of a model when you retrieve or set them. They allow you to customize how data is displayed or stored in your database tables.

Accessors are used to modify attribute values when you retrieve them.

Example:

// Define Get full name attribute in User model

public function getFullNameAttribute()
{
    return $this->first_name . ' ' . $this->last_name;
}

Usage

$user = User::find(1); 
echo $user->full_name;  // Get full name attribute from User model

While mutators are used to modify attribute values before they are saved to the database.

Example:

// Define set email attribute in User model

public function setEmailAttribute($value)
{
    $this->attributes['email'] = strtolower($value);
}

Usage

$user = new User;
$user->email = 'User@example.com'; // Mutates the email address before saving.
$user->save();

Answer: A namespace is a way to organize and group related classes and functions into logical containers. Namespaces help prevent naming conflicts and make it easier to manage and organize your code, especially in larger applications.

PHP Namespace: Laravel uses PHP's namespace feature. Namespaces are defined at the beginning of a PHP file and typically match the directory structure of your application.

For example, you might have a namespace like this at the top of a PHP file:

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

Answer: Middleware in Laravel is a filter that processes HTTP requests before they reach the application's routes or controllers. It's used for tasks like authentication, logging, and input validation.

You can create a middleware in Laravel using the below artisan command.

php artian make:middleware CustomMiddleware

Answer: Laravel's routing system is a fundamental part of the framework that defines how incoming HTTP requests should be handled by the application. It maps URLs to specific controllers or closures. It allows you to define the behavior of your web application.

Routes are typically defined in the routes/web.php or routes/api.php files. An example route definition:

Route::get('/profile', [ProfileController::class, 'show']);

Answer: Eager loading in Laravel Eloquent is a technique used to retrieve and load related data (typically from a database) along with the main data in a single query. This helps to reduce the number of database queries by loading related data upfront. It's crucial for preventing the N+1 query problem. Its primary purpose is to optimize database queries and prevent the N+1 query problem, ultimately improving the performance of your application.

The major benefits of using Eager loading are the following:

• Minimizing Database Queries
• Improving Performance
• Solving the N+1 Query Problem
• Enhancing Code Readability and Maintainability
• Supporting Complex Relationships
• Reducing Server Load

Answer: In Laravel, a seeder is a mechanism for populating database tables with initial or test data. Seeders are often used in the development and testing phases of web application development to create sample data in the database. Laravel provides a convenient way to define and run seeders using Artisan commands.

Create a new seeder class using the Artisan command:

php artisan make:seeder UserProfileSeeder

Using this command, you can generate a seeder class and define the attribute to insert sample data.

Example:

public function run() {

   User::create([

      'name' => 'John Doe',

      'email' => 'johndoe@example.com',

      'password' => Hash::make('password'),

   ]);

}

After that, you will have to run the seeder in order to seed the sample data.

php artisan db:seed --class=UserProfileSeeder

Answer: In Laravel, a factory is a powerful tool for generating fake data for testing and database seeding. Factories allow you to define the structure and attributes of Eloquent model objects and then generate instances of those objects with randomized or predefined data. Factories are often used in conjunction with Laravel's database seeding to populate database tables with realistic test data.

You can create a factory class using the Artisan command.
Example:

php artisan make:factory UserFactory

This will generate a new factory class in the database/factories directory. In this class, you can define how to create instances of a specific model.

Example:

public function definition(): array
{
   return [
     'name' => fake()->name(),
     'email' => fake()->unique()->safeEmail(),
     'email_verified_at' => now(),
     'password' => '$2y$10$92IXUNpkjO0rOQ5byMi.Ye4oKoEa3Ro9llC/.og/at2.uheWG/igi',
     'remember_token' => Str::random(10),
    ];
}

Answer: Soft delete is a database pattern used in Laravel and other frameworks to mark records as "deleted" without physically removing them from the database. Instead of permanently deleting a record, a timestamp is set on a special column to indicate when it was "soft deleted." This approach allows for the potential recovery of deleted records and maintains referential integrity in the database.

In Laravel, the Eloquent ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) makes it easy to implement soft deletes for your models. Here's how to do it:
Firstly, add a column in the respective table for that through the migration.

php artisan make:migration add_deleted_at_to_users_table

After that in the respective model, you will have to manage the soft delete as shown below.

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\SoftDeletes;

class YourModel extends Model
{
    use SoftDeletes;

    protected $dates = ['deleted_at'];

    // Other model properties and methods
}

Answer: Enabling query logging in Laravel allows you to capture and view the SQL queries executed by your application. This can be helpful for debugging, performance optimization, and understanding how your application interacts with the database

// Enable query logging
DB::enableQueryLog();

  // Run your database queries here (e.g., Eloquent queries or query builder)
  $results = User::all();

  // Retrieve the logged queries
  $queries = DB::getQueryLog();

 // You can now inspect or log the queries
 foreach ($queries as $query) {
     // Access the SQL query
     $sql = $query['query'];

     // Access the bindings (if any)
     $bindings = $query['bindings'];

     // Log or print the query and bindings as needed
     // For example, you can use the "dd" function to dump and die:
     dd($sql, $bindings);
}

Answer: In Laravel, packages refer to external bundles of code, configurations, views, and assets that can be integrated into your Laravel application to extend its functionality. Laravel packages are also known as Composer packages because they are typically distributed and managed using Composer.

Answer: Localization in Laravel is the process of adapting your web application to support multiple languages and regions. It allows users to view content in their preferred language.

Laravel provides a robust and flexible localization system that makes it relatively straightforward to create multilingual applications.

Answer: In Laravel, a collection is an object-oriented data structure provided by the framework for working with arrays of data. Collections provide a wide range of methods for performing operations on data. Such as filtering, mapping, reducing, and sorting.

They are particularly useful when dealing with query results from the Eloquent ORM, API responses, or any other dataset that needs to be manipulated.

Example:

$data = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];

// Create a collection from an array
$collection = collect($data);

// Perform operations on the collection
$filtered = $collection->filter(function ($value) {
   return $value % 2 == 0;
});

$sum = $filtered->sum();

// Output the result
dd($filtered->toArray(), $sum);

Answer: In Laravel, relationships refer to the associations between different database tables or models. Laravel provides an easy way to define and work with relationships between models.

There are several types of relationships in Laravel's Eloquent ORM:

1. One-to-One Relationship - hasOne Relation (Ex. User has One Profile)
2. One-to-Many Relationship - hasMany Relation (Ex. User has Many Posts)
3. Many-to-One Relationship (Inverse of One-to-Many) - belongsTo Relation (Ex. Many Posts belong to one User)
4. Many-to-Many Relationship
5. Polymorphic Relationship
6. Has-Many-Through Relationship
7. Inverse of Has-Many-Through Relationship

Answer: In Laravel, a facade is like a friendly face that simplifies how you interact with complex parts of the framework. Such as databases, caching, or session management.

Imagine it as a window through which you can talk to a complex machine without needing to understand all the inner workings of that machine. Facades make your code clean and readable while still providing powerful functionality.

Example ofDB facade, to interact with the database:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;
$users = DB::table('users')->where('status', 'active')->get();

Answer: Laravel Passport is an official package provided by the Laravel framework that provides a complete OAuth2 server implementation for API authentication. It simplifies the process of implementing OAuth2 and token-based authentication. Also, it makes it easy to secure your APIs and enable user authentication for mobile apps, single-page applications (SPAs), and other client applications.

Answer: Laravel queues allow you to defer time-consuming tasks, like sending emails or processing data, to be executed asynchronously. This helps improve the application's responsiveness and scalability. Queues allow you to perform these tasks asynchronously in the background, separate from the main request-response cycle of your application.

Answer: Caching in Laravel is a technique for temporarily storing and retrieving frequently accessed data to improve the performance of web applications. Laravel involves storing the results of expensive operations in memory or a cache store (e.g., Redis, Memcached) to improve performance. Laravel provides a simple and powerful caching system.

It involves storing the results of expensive operations, such as database queries or complex calculations, in a cache store. So that subsequent requests for the same data can be served more quickly.

Answer: Performance optimization techniques include the following-

• Caching
• Optimizing database queries
• Lazy Loading Eager Relationships
• Queues and Job Processing,
• Minimizing unnecessary code execution,
• Optimize Asset Loading
• Use Content Delivery Networks (CDNs): Utilize CDNs for serving static assets (CSS, JavaScript, images, etc.).
• Employing efficient code practices, and utilizing tools like
• Laravel Telescope for debugging and profiling.

Answer: In simple words. Think of a Service Container as a magic box that holds all the tools and materials your web application needs to work correctly. These tools and materials are often classes and objects that your application relies on

It plays a crucial role in managing class dependencies and resolving them when needed. The Service Container is a powerful tool for managing and organizing the objects and services that make up your Laravel application.

Here are some key points to understand about the Service Container in Laravel:

1. Dependency Injection: The Service Container enables dependency injection, which is a design pattern that allows classes to receive their dependencies from an external source rather than creating them themselves.
2. Binding: In Laravel, you can bind classes or interfaces to concrete implementations within the Service Container. This binding tells the container which class should be instantiated when an instance of a particular class or interface is requested. Bindings are typically defined in service providers or the AppServiceProvider.
3. Service Providers: Service providers are a way to organize the binding and bootstrapping of services within your application. They are an essential part of Laravel's container system and play a role in configuring various components of your application.

Answers: Laravel Horizon is a powerful dashboard and monitoring tool for managing Laravel queues. It provides real-time insights into the performance and status of your queues. Also, it makes it easier to monitor and manage queue workers, failed jobs, and job throughput. Horizon also allows you to pause, retry, or delete jobs and provides a visually intuitive interface for queue management.

Answer: Laravel Dusk is an official package for browser testing in Laravel applications. It simplifies the process of writing and running browser tests using a clean, expressive API. Dusk can simulate user interactions with your application in a real browser, making it suitable for testing JavaScript-heavy applications and performing end-to-end testing. It provides tools for interacting with pages, submitting forms, and asserting elements on web pages.

Answer: Laravel Mix is a developer-friendly API for defining and managing asset compilation tasks in Laravel applications. It simplifies the process of compiling assets like CSS, JavaScript, and images by providing a clean, concise API for defining build steps. Mix can process and version assets, handle minification, and generate source maps. It abstracts complex build configurations, making asset compilation more accessible to developers.

Answer: Laravel Policies and Gates are authorization mechanisms that allow you to define and manage authorization logic in a structured way. Policies are typically used to define authorization rules for Eloquent models, while Gates are more generic and can be used for any type of authorization check.

These mechanisms make it easy to centralize and reuse authorization logic across your application, promoting clean and maintainable code.

Example:

// Defining a Policy
php artisan make:policy PostPolicy

// Using a Gate in a Controller
if (Gate::allows('edit-post', $post)) {
   // User is authorized to edit the post then allow only
}

Answer: The OAuth2 Implicit Grant is one of the OAuth2 authorization flows supported by Laravel Passport. It is primarily used for single-page applications (SPAs) and mobile apps where the client-side JavaScript or app itself handles the authorization process.

In this flow, access tokens are issued directly to the client without the need for a server-side component to exchange them for tokens. It is suitable for scenarios where the client can securely store and use access tokens.

Answer: Laravel provides a convenient way to work with database transactions using the DB::beginTransaction(), DB::commit(), and DB::rollback() methods.

Transactions are essential for ensuring data consistency in situations where multiple database operations must succeed or fail together. By wrapping a series of database operations in a transaction, Laravel ensures that changes are only saved to the database if all operations are successful, or none are saved if any operation fails.

In case, if the transaction fails then it will roll back the current transaction from the database. So, it will be helpful to save complete data into the database.

Answer: Laravel Passport is a Laravel package that simplifies API authentication by providing a complete OAuth2 server implementation.

It supports the following OAuth2 grant types:

• Authorization Code
• Implicit
• Password
• Client Credentials
• Personal Access Tokens

Passport streamlines API authentication by handling token issuance, refreshing, and authentication flow, making it easier to secure APIs for various use cases.

Answer: Laravel Echo is a powerful JavaScript library that facilitates real-time event broadcasting and handling in Laravel applications. It's designed to work seamlessly with Laravel's built-in broadcasting system, which uses technologies like WebSockets, Pusher, and Redis to enable real-time communication between the server and connected clients (such as web browsers or mobile apps).

Key features and components of Laravel Echo include:

1. Broadcasting Events: Laravel Echo allows you to broadcast events from the server to connected clients in real time. Events can represent various activities within your application, such as new messages, notifications, etc.
2. Listening to Events: With Laravel Echo, clients can subscribe to specific events and listen for updates.
3. Integration with Laravel Broadcasting: Laravel Echo is tightly integrated with Laravel's broadcasting system. You can use Laravel's event broadcasting capabilities to broadcast events to channels, and Laravel Echo will handle the client-side logic to listen for and react to those events.
4. Presence Channels: Laravel Echo supports presence channels, which are useful for building real-time collaborative applications. Presence channels allow you to see who is currently online or participating in a specific channel or room.
5. Pusher Integration: While Laravel Echo is designed to work with various broadcasting drivers, it has native support for Pusher, a real-time messaging service. You can easily set up and configure Pusher to power real-time features in your Laravel application.
6. Socket.io Support: Laravel Echo also supports the use of the Socket.io library for real-time communication, providing another option for building real-time features.

Answer: Laravel's broadcasting system allows you to build real-time features in your application with ease. Advantages include:

• Seamless integration with Laravel applications.
• Support for various broadcasting drivers (e.g., Pusher, Redis, Socket.io).
• Real-time event broadcasting to connected clients.
• Presence channels for tracking online users.
• Simple and consistent API for broadcasting and listening to events.

Answer: The Repository pattern is a design pattern commonly used in Laravel (and other PHP frameworks). It abstracts and separates the data access logic from the rest of the application. It acts as a middleman between the application's business logic and the database. It provides a way to perform database operations without directly interacting with the database or its specific implementation details.

Here's how the Repository pattern works in Laravel:

1. Abstraction Layer: The Repository pattern introduces an abstraction layer that defines a set of methods for performing common database operations like querying, inserting, updating, and deleting records. These methods are usually defined in an interface or an abstract class.
2. Concrete Implementations: Concrete implementations of the repository are created to provide the actual database interactions. Each repository typically corresponds to a specific data model or table in the database.
3. Dependency Injection: In Laravel, dependency injection is used to inject the repository instances into the application's services or controllers. This allows you to work with repositories as dependencies rather than directly interacting with the database.

Benefits

• Code Separation: The Repository pattern promotes the separation of concerns by isolating data access logic from the application's core business logic.
• Testability: By abstracting database operations, you can easily replace the real repository with a mock or stub repository for unit testing.
• Flexibility: You can switch between different data sources (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite) or storage mechanisms (e.g., databases, APIs) without affecting the application's core logic.

Answer: The Service provider contains two methods which are register() and boot().

register() Method:

The register() method is responsible for binding classes and dependencies into Laravel's service container. The service container is a powerful tool for managing class dependencies and performing dependency injection.

Within the register() method, you typically define bindings using the container's bind() method or helper functions like singleton() and instance(). These bindings instruct the container on how to resolve dependencies when a class or service is requested.

Example:

public function register()
{
    $this->app->bind('example', function () {
        return new ExampleService();
    });
}

Boot Method:

The boot() method is used for any application logic or actions that should be performed after all service providers have been registered. It's the ideal place to set up event listeners, define routes, register observers, or perform any other actions that require the application to be fully bootstrapped.

Example:

public function boot()
{
   Route::get('/example', 'ExampleController@index');
}