How to become a Certified Laravel Developer

Every web developer must constantly improve his skills, undergo training, receive various certificates confirming his skills.

The Laravel Developer Certificate is a great skill option that provides respect for colleagues, superiors, gives a great advantage when communicating with potential employers, and simply increases self-esteem.

What do you need to pass the exam?

• 249 euros. This is the cost of taking the exam. True, they have various discounts and promotional codes, which, if you wait for them, can reduce the price to 200, 150 and even 100 euros. Personally, I didn't wait and gave it for 249 euros.
• Basic knowledge of English. The test is written in English. To understand the questions, not to get confused in terms, not to waste a lot of time thinking over tasks, you need to master at least a little technical English.
• Constant practice with Laravel for over two years. Here I ran into problems: now I rarely write code myself, I look more to ensure that others write it well. There are days when I don’t even open phpstorm, because of which some skills are lost and then I have to peep some things in the documentation. But if you practice constantly, you shouldn't have these problems.
• Desire and time. Even if you constantly write code in Laravel, you still need to prepare for the exam. I would advise you to read the entire documentation several times (well, perhaps not all, I realized that later), brush up on the blank spots and fill in the knowledge gaps. In general, I spent about 40-50 hours of clean time on this.

How is the exam?

• On the website https://certification.laravel.com/ there is a link "GetExamVoucher". We click, go to the payment page, fill out, pay. After payment, a letter with a questionnaire will be sent to the mail, where you need to fill in the data of who will take the exam (that is, your data). Then submit the form and wait for an invitation to take the exam.

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• The letter will contain 2 links: one for setting up the computer (checking sound, lighting, camera, etc.), the second for going to the page with the test. By the way, even before starting the test, you need to show an identity document (passport or driver's license) to the camera.
• Note! If you do not pass the exam the first time, you will have another attempt within 3 months to pass.
• During the test, you will not be able to use any applications on the computer, except for a browser with one open tab, where there will be a page with tasks directly. That is, you won't be able to look at the documentation or in phpstorm during the exam, the screen and video from the camera are recorded throughout the exam. Option with "Ticket number 9, reception" is also unlikely to be implemented, although I have not tried it. Tyler's all-seeing eye Took away everything.
• The exam is given 50 minutes for 45 test tasks. The format is the same: a question or a piece of code and 4 answer options below, plus a fifth option, which suggests skipping the question. Important! If you are not sure of the correct answer, it is better to skip it without guessing (if you don’t guess, your answer will be considered a more serious mistake than just missing). But try to remember this question. What for? I will explain below.
• Life hack! I passed the exam 2 times and noticed that in total there are about 60-70 questions on certification, of which 45 are randomly selected. That is, if it did not work out the first time, then about 80% of the questions that already were on the first try. Therefore, I recommend that you memorize those questions with which you had problems, and look for answers to them, so that next time you do not blunder.
• The test results will be available in 2-3 days. A letter with congratulations or a recommendation to try later will come to the mail.

What are the questions on the exam?

The test covers almost all the main sections of Laravel, but without any particularly subtle and rarely used points. That is, broadcasting, browsertest, mocking, serviceproviders, servicecontainers, contracts, and the entire Security, Testing section can be skipped. Exam and questions on official Laravel packages (Cashier, Dusk, Envoy, etc.) are not included.

At the same time, special attention should be paid to the following topics: routing, middleware, blade, eloquentrelations, mutators, collections, database: getting started. These topics will be about 70% of all questions.

By the way, I would divide the questions into 2 types:​

1. Theoretical are those that can be answered simply by reading the documentation.

These are general, superficial questions. For example, what is a composer, what are packages for, how to connect a package to a project, what type of encryption Laravel uses, what logic should be written in the middleware, etc. Everything is pretty basic and simple. That is, something that even a novice developer should know.

2. Logical ones are those that you need to think a little about. Basically, these are examples of small code on several lines and options for answers to them (which should appear on the screen if you run this code).

There will also be tasks with tricks. So, the code can give errors and you need to choose exactly the answer with an error.

There are also questions about Laravel best practices, convention (especially regarding eloquent relationships), optimization, so that the code uses less memory and runs faster, questions about collection methods and various helpers.

Note!

In obtaining a Laravel certificate, the certificate itself is not as important as the preparation process. The fact is that in preparation for the test, you will have to parse most of the Laravel themes. And this knowledge will undoubtedly help in the future. The certificate, when it is received, will be an excellent confirmation of the acquired skills!

Article was prepared by php-developer Arthur Schablevsky