PHP Technical Assessment Template

Task 1: Build an app or plugin that delivers the desired outcome

We want you to build a PHP app or WordPress plugin that provides the desired outcome.

User Story

As an administrator, I want to see how my website web pages are linked together to my home page so that I can manually search for ways to improve my SEO rankings.

The What

• Add a back-end admin page (for WP - settings page) where the admin can log in and then manually trigger a crawl and view the results.
• When the admin triggers a crawl:
  • Set a task to run immediately.
  • Then set it to run the crawl every hour ⏰🤖.
• The crawl task:
  • Delete the results from the last crawl (i.e. in temporary storage), if they exist.
  • Delete the sitemap.html file if it exists.
  • Start at the website’s root URL (i.e. home page)
  • Extract all of the internal hyperlinks, i.e. results.
  • Store results temporarily in the database.
  • Display the results on the admin page.
  • Save the homepage content as a static .html file, in the directory of your choice.
  • Create a sitemap.html file that shows the results as a sitemap list structure.
• When the admin requests to view the results, pull the results from storage and display them on the admin page.
• If an error happens, display an error notice to inform of what happened and guide for what to do.
• On the front-end, allow a visitor to view the sitemap.html page.

Simplifying the Task:

Let’s keep this simple by:

• Only crawl the home webpage, i.e. instead of recursively crawling through all of the internal hyperlinks.
• Only delete the temporary stored results based on time. Normally, we would also delete them when a change in the content happens. But let’s keep it really simple and only delete based on time.
• For storage, you can use a database (MariaDB or MySQL) or the filesystem.

App or Plugin Expectations

• Content on the home page is dynamic.
• It lives in a GitHub repo and retains its history.
• It’s built using our assessment template.
• It’s built with modern OOP with PSR. It uses procedural where it makes sense.
• It’s complete and works.
• It delivers the right expected outcome per what the admin requested (per the user story).
• It does not generate errors, warnings, or notices.
• It runs on the following versions of PHP: 7.0 and up.
• If built with WordPress, it runs on version 5.2 and up.
• It does not create new global variables.
• Use a MariaDB or MySQL database.

🎖Bonus Points

Want extra credit? Cool, here are some bonus opportunities for you:

• Your app or plugin passes PHP Code Sniffer inspection (The PHP CS configuration file is included in this repository).
• Automatically test that your code works as expected by writing unit and integration tests. Need inspiration? Check out our GitHub.

Task 2: Explain It

Add an Explanation.md file to your repo that explains:

• The problem to be solved in your own words
• A technical spec of how you will solve it
• The technical decisions you made and why
• How the code itself works and why
• How your solution achieves the admin’s desired outcome per the user story

Think out loud. We want to know:

• How you approach a problem
• How you think about it
• Why you chose this direction
• Why this direction is a better solution

🎉 Our hope is that you enjoy this technical assessment. Have fun with it! 🎉

FAQ

Can I use third-party libraries?

Yes. You are free to use to choose any third-party library. Just make sure to explain why you choose each and how you are using them.

Do my git commit history matter?

Yes it does. Why? It shows us how you work.

Where do I ask questions?

Create an issue in your assessment repo. Let's discuss things there. Ping us. We are happy to help and collaborate.