PHP Zend certification today

The reasons for passing PHP Zend certification can be different: someone wants to test their knowledge, someone wants to stand out from a huge number of php developers, and someone has this requirement at work. A month ago, I was able to successfully pass certification, and in this article I will tell you what this exam looks like today, where to look for materials for preparation, as well as a little bit of information about real issues from the exam.

Organizational part

In order to get certified, you must first enroll and then come to the training center. Find the nearest center here . A certification voucher can be purchased online or in the center. The voucher costs $ 195, plus you have to pay for the services of the center itself ($ 40 in my case).

How is the exam.

The exam is a test of 70 questions. There are 90 minutes to answer, which is quite enough. After answering all the questions, I still have 15 minutes to review those questions I doubted. During the exam, questions can be skipped and marked with asterisks to return to them later.
')
There are three types of questions.

• With one correct answer
• With several correct options (number indicated)
• Free text: the name of a function, a constant or a variable, or the result of a script.

It is known that all questions have a certain weight. Unfortunately, we can only guess its meaning for each specific question. There is no penalty for incorrect answers.

At the end of the test, you will see a notification of the result. According to various sources for success you need to answer 60-75% of questions successfully. Unfortunately, Zend does not notify about incorrect answers, giving only recommendations in the case of Feil.

Within 48 hours after passing the exam, your name will be added to Zend Yellow Pages, for example. In addition, Zend will send to your real mail a paper diploma that you will receive within 4-10 weeks.

Exam questions.

To date, testing is carried out on PHP version 5.5.

Questions cover 10 topics:

1. PHP basics
2. Work with data in PHP
3. Strings
4. Arrays
5. Input and output data
6. Functions
7. OOP
8. Database
9. Security
10. Web features

More detailed list here .
Many of the questions are combined, that is, cover several topics at once. In general, certification checks not so much knowledge of php, as your abilities as a developer and engineer. You will need logical thinking, attentiveness, the ability to predetermine the result and the ability to compile in your head a lot of pieces of PHP code.

The following is a list of questions that I remember on the exam.

• Question about the value of the ENT_COMPAT constant in the htmlentities function
• Question about the purpose of the function substr_compare
• In the test there were several questions on the screening of lines, the type: is it enough to use the htmlentities and htmlspecialchars function to safely add to the database, which the user entered.
• Question about the correct naming of variables. I came across an example with a variable like $ _123.
• There was some code like this:
  

  function foo ($a = 10, $b){ if ($a) { return $b/10; } } echo foo(0); 

  
  The response options (except for a few numerical values) were warning and fatal error
• In several questions there were try / catch blocks. (remember multi catch?)
• Several questions of the same type on the knowledge of the DOM methods
• Question about the appointment of magic methods in php with several correct options
• The function dl () was encountered in several questions.
• Who else uses threads in PHP? I came across at least 5 issues related to certification
• Question about php.ini configuration options for managing resources allocated for PHP
• How to make the session ended automatically at a certain time?
• Remember that the Submit button in the form can be set as a picture? Do you remember where the coordinates of the point the user clicked are stored in $ _POST? I came across such a question.
• Question about the inheritance of interfaces with a specific code example (my code was not valid)
• An interesting question with the example code, where there was a function named strlen, located in a particular namespace. I found the code invalid, although in fact it is not
• Question about the appointment of neymspeysov
• There was a very difficult to understand code, with closures returned by static and non-static class methods
• How to correctly override the final class? (in a trick question)
• Question about the correct protection of a text file with user data located on the server. Assumed several correct answers.
• An interesting question, like this: how best to give the user access to the media file (put it in the public directory and provide a link, send it in the http response, save it on a third-party public server, or just don’t use PHP for such tasks)

Materials for the preparation.

The Internet is full of information to prepare for certification. php.net you do not overpower (and do not need it), but during preparation you will have to contact it more than once.

Test Prep for the PHP Certification Exam

shop.zend.com/en/php5-certification-training.html
The cost is $ 1000.
The price includes a voucher for passing the exam ($ 195).
In the document you will find detailed information on all the exam topics and a lot of test tasks. This document alone is quite enough to prepare for the exam, but because of the cost, I did not use this document in preparing for the exam. It is easy to find outdated versions of this document.

Zend PHP Certification Study Guide

shop.zend.com/en/php-certification/zend-php-certification-guide-pdf.html
The cost is $ 19.95.
The document contains brief information on all topics of testing and test tasks with answers. I would recommend to start training with this guide, because it gives a good idea about the level of tasks in the testing itself, and about the amount of knowledge necessary for successful testing. Several questions from the guide caught me in testing almost unchanged. In addition, there are questions in testing that are mentioned in passing in the guide.
Buy guide can be on the link above. Most likely it can be found on torrents, but be careful with the PHP version.

Informal materials.

edward-designer.com/web/passing-php-5-3-certification-exam The blog covers all topics from the exam in detail.

zend-php.appspot.com/questions_list test suite, sometimes very close to real

In addition, during the preparation, I used the PhpRiot ios application . The cost of a full set of questions is about $ 7. In the application there are questions that are very similar to those that were on the exam. There is a version of the application in the form of a plugin for Chrome .

There are a lot of other materials on the Internet, but almost everything is very outdated. In PHP, there have been many innovations over the past 5 years, and the authors of the test have emphasized this.

I wish you good luck in passing certification!