Web Development Interview Questions in Bhubaneswar
36 practice questions with answers for Web Development interviews in Bhubaneswar.
Web Development jobs in Bhubaneswar
Bhubaneswar is eastern India's emerging IT hub, with campuses of large IT-services companies in Infocity and Info Valley. Freshers make up a big share of hiring, so fundamentals and aptitude rounds matter most.
Below are 36 questions that match the mix of service, product and domain employers hiring junior web developers in Bhubaneswar.
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01
What are the differences between Apache and Nginx?
Apache uses a process or thread based model and supports per-directory .htaccess files, which is convenient on shared hosting. Nginx uses an event-driven model that handles many concurrent connections with low memory, making it excellent for static files and as a reverse proxy. Nginx runs PHP through PHP-FPM and has no .htaccess, so rules go in central config. Many setups put Nginx in front of Apache or application servers.
02
Validate a signup form with JavaScript before submission.
Check fields on submit and show inline messages:
form.addEventListener('submit', (e) => {
const errors = [];
if (form.name.value.trim().length < 3) errors.push('Name too short');
if (!/^[6-9]\d{9}$/.test(form.mobile.value)) errors.push('Invalid mobile');
if (form.password.value !== form.confirm.value) errors.push('Passwords do not match');
if (errors.length) {
e.preventDefault();
errorBox.textContent = errors.join('. ');
}
});
Client validation improves experience, but the server must validate again.
03
Explain database normalization up to third normal form.
Normalization reduces duplicate data and update problems. 1NF requires atomic values, no repeating groups like phone1, phone2. 2NF requires every non-key column to depend on the whole primary key, not part of a composite key. 3NF removes transitive dependencies, so a column depends only on the key, for example moving city details out of an orders table. Read-heavy reports sometimes denormalise deliberately for speed.
INNER JOIN returns only rows with matching values in both tables, such as students who have enrolled. LEFT JOIN returns all rows from the left table and matching rows from the right, filling NULL where there is no match, which is useful to find students with no enrollment. RIGHT JOIN is the mirror of LEFT JOIN. MySQL has no FULL OUTER JOIN, but you can simulate it with a UNION of LEFT and RIGHT joins.
Cross-site request forgery tricks a logged-in user's browser into sending an unwanted request, such as changing their email, because cookies are attached automatically. Prevention includes a unique CSRF token in every state-changing form that the server verifies, SameSite=Lax or Strict cookies, and checking the Origin header. GET requests should never change data. Frameworks like Laravel add CSRF tokens to forms by default.
06
What are container queries and how do they differ from media queries?
Media queries respond to the viewport size, while container queries respond to the size of a parent element. You mark a parent with container-type: inline-size and then write @container (min-width: 400px) rules for its children. This lets a card component change layout depending on whether it sits in a narrow sidebar or a wide main area, making components truly reusable. They are supported in all modern browsers.
Every element is a rectangular box made of content, padding, border and margin from inside to outside. With the default box-sizing: content-box, the width you set applies only to the content, so padding and border increase the final size. Setting box-sizing: border-box makes width include padding and border, which makes layouts predictable. Most projects apply border-box to all elements in a global reset.
08
What is PHP and how does a PHP page get processed?
PHP is a server-side scripting language widely used for websites, WordPress, Laravel apps and APIs. When a browser requests a .php file, the web server such as Apache or Nginx passes it to the PHP interpreter, usually through PHP-FPM. PHP runs the code, talks to databases if needed, and sends back plain HTML or JSON. The browser never sees the PHP source, only the generated output.
09
What is the difference between a primary key and a foreign key?
A primary key uniquely identifies each row in a table and cannot be NULL, for example students.id. A foreign key is a column in another table that refers to that primary key, such as enrollments.student_id, and enforces referential integrity so you cannot add an enrollment for a student who does not exist. Foreign keys can define ON DELETE CASCADE or RESTRICT behaviour. InnoDB supports foreign keys.
10
How do SSL/TLS certificates work, and what is Let's Encrypt?
A TLS certificate proves a server owns a domain and enables encrypted HTTPS connections. During the handshake, the browser verifies the certificate chain against trusted authorities, and both sides agree on session keys. Let's Encrypt is a free, automated certificate authority; tools like Certbot request and renew its certificates, which are valid for about 90 days. Automatic renewal through cron or systemd timers prevents expiry outages.
this depends on how a function is called, not where it is written. In a method call like user.greet(), this is user. In a plain function call it is undefined in strict mode. With new it is the new object, and call, apply or bind set it explicitly. Arrow functions do not have their own this; they take it from the surrounding scope, which is why they are handy inside callbacks.
12
How do you manage configuration and secrets across local, staging and production?
I keep code identical across environments and change only configuration through environment variables, usually loaded from a .env file that is never committed. A .env.example documents required keys without values. In production, secrets live in the server environment, the CI secret store or a cloud secrets manager. Each environment has separate database credentials and API keys, so a staging leak cannot affect production.
13
Database credentials were accidentally pushed to a public GitHub repository. What now?
Deleting the commit is not enough, because bots scan GitHub within minutes. I would immediately rotate the password and any other exposed keys, check database logs for suspicious access, and then purge the secret from history using git filter-repo. Going forward, secrets belong in environment variables or a secrets manager, .env files go in .gitignore, and secret-scanning tools run in CI.
A content delivery network caches static files such as images, CSS and JavaScript on servers in many locations, so a user in Chennai is served from a nearby edge rather than a distant origin. This reduces latency, lowers load on your server and absorbs traffic spikes and some DDoS attacks. Cache-Control headers decide how long files stay cached, and versioned filenames let you deploy updates without stale content.
A transaction groups several SQL statements so they succeed or fail together. ACID means Atomicity, all or nothing; Consistency, rules and constraints stay valid; Isolation, concurrent transactions do not see each other's partial changes; and Durability, committed data survives crashes. For example, transferring wallet balance debits one row and credits another inside START TRANSACTION and COMMIT, with ROLLBACK if anything fails.
16
How do srcset and sizes help with responsive images?
srcset lists several versions of the same image with their widths, for example hero-480.jpg 480w and hero-1200.jpg 1200w. sizes tells the browser how wide the image will be shown at different viewport widths. The browser then picks the smallest file that still looks sharp for that screen and pixel density. This saves a lot of mobile data compared to sending one large image to every device.
17
What is the difference between id and class attributes?
An id must be unique within a page and identifies one element, so it is used for anchor links, label for attributes and getElementById. A class can be reused on many elements and is the normal hook for CSS styling and grouping in JavaScript. Ids also have much higher CSS specificity, so styling with ids makes overrides harder; most teams style only with classes.
18
Tell me about a time a website went down and how you handled it.
Situation: our e-commerce site went down at 11 PM during a sale. Task: as the on-call developer, I had to restore it fast. Action: I checked logs, found PHP-FPM workers exhausted by a slow query, restarted the service, added an index to fix the query, and kept the team updated every 15 minutes. Result: the site was back in 20 minutes, and I wrote a postmortem with monitoring alerts to catch it earlier.
19
How do you handle pressure to skip security work to meet a deadline?
Situation: a manager wanted to launch a form without server-side validation to save a day. Task: I needed to protect the product without blocking the launch. Action: I explained the risk in business terms, data leaks and spam, and proposed shipping core validation and rate limiting now, with less critical hardening in the next sprint. Result: we launched on time with essential protections and completed the rest within a week.
20
Create students, courses and enrollments tables with proper keys.
A many-to-many relationship needs a junction table:
CREATE TABLE students (
id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
name VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL,
email VARCHAR(150) NOT NULL UNIQUE
);
CREATE TABLE courses (
id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
title VARCHAR(150) NOT NULL
);
CREATE TABLE enrollments (
student_id INT,
course_id INT,
enrolled_on DATE NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (student_id, course_id),
FOREIGN KEY (student_id) REFERENCES students(id) ON DELETE CASCADE,
FOREIGN KEY (course_id) REFERENCES courses(id)
);
21
Your page shows a horizontal scrollbar on mobile. How do you find and fix the cause?
Horizontal scroll means some element is wider than the viewport. I would open Chrome DevTools device mode and use a temporary rule like * { outline: 1px solid red } to spot the culprit. Common causes are fixed pixel widths, images without max-width: 100%, long unbroken URLs, and 100vw combined with padding. Fixes include max-width, overflow-wrap: anywhere and box-sizing: border-box. I avoid hiding it with overflow-x: hidden without fixing the root cause.
Two common approaches:
SELECT MAX(salary) AS second_highest
FROM employees
WHERE salary < (SELECT MAX(salary) FROM employees);
SELECT DISTINCT salary
FROM employees
ORDER BY salary DESC
LIMIT 1 OFFSET 1;
The first returns NULL when there is no second value. With MySQL 8 you can also use DENSE_RANK() OVER (ORDER BY salary DESC) and filter rank = 2, which generalises to the Nth highest.
23
What is the difference between an abstract class and an interface in PHP?
An interface defines only method signatures and constants, and a class can implement many interfaces. An abstract class can contain properties, constructors and implemented methods along with abstract ones, but a class can extend only one. Use an interface to define a contract like PaymentGateway, and an abstract class to share common code among closely related classes, such as a base Controller.
24
Show monthly revenue for the current year from an orders table.
Group by month and sum the amounts:
SELECT DATE_FORMAT(created_at, '%Y-%m') AS month,
COUNT(*) AS orders,
SUM(amount) AS revenue
FROM orders
WHERE created_at >= '2026-01-01'
AND created_at < '2027-01-01'
AND status = 'paid'
GROUP BY month
ORDER BY month;
Using a date range instead of YEAR(created_at) = 2026 lets MySQL use an index on created_at.
25
How do you test a website for cross-browser compatibility?
I check feature support on Can I Use before using new CSS, and use Autoprefixer through the build for vendor prefixes. I test on Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge, plus real Android and iPhone devices because Safari on iOS behaves differently. Cloud testing platforms help when devices are missing. I use @supports for progressive enhancement, so older browsers still get a working, simpler layout.
26
Rendering a table with 5,000 rows freezes the browser. What are your options?
Creating thousands of nodes at once blocks the main thread. Options are server-side pagination, rendering in chunks with requestAnimationFrame, or virtual scrolling where only the 30 to 50 visible rows exist in the DOM at any time. I would also build rows in a DocumentFragment, avoid layout reads inside loops, and use CSS content-visibility: auto so off-screen rows skip rendering work.
27
A dashboard page becomes slower the longer it stays open. What could cause it?
This points to a memory leak. Typical causes are setInterval timers never cleared, event listeners added repeatedly on re-render, detached DOM nodes still referenced in arrays, and growing caches. I would take heap snapshots in the DevTools Memory tab a few minutes apart and compare retained objects. Fixes include clearInterval on cleanup, removeEventListener or AbortController for listeners, and limiting cached data size.
28
Your page has a high Cumulative Layout Shift because of fonts and ads. How do you reduce it?
For fonts I would preload the main font file, use font-display: swap or optional, and tune fallback fonts with size-adjust so the swap does not move text. For ads and embeds I would reserve space with a fixed min-height or aspect-ratio box before they load. I would also set width and height on all images and avoid inserting banners above existing content after load.
29
What is SQL injection and how do prepared statements stop it?
SQL injection happens when user input is concatenated into a query, so input like ' OR '1'='1 changes the query's logic and can dump or delete data. Prepared statements send the SQL structure and the data separately, so the database always treats input as a value, never as code. Escaping functions are not a full substitute. Least-privilege database users limit the damage if a flaw slips through.
AJAX means updating parts of a page by exchanging data with the server in the background, without a full page reload. Originally it used XMLHttpRequest and XML, but today it is done with the fetch API and JSON. Examples include live search suggestions, adding to cart without reload, and infinite scroll. The server returns data, and JavaScript updates the DOM with the result.
31
What is the difference between sessions and cookies in PHP?
A cookie stores data in the browser and is sent with every request, so users can see and edit it. A session stores data on the server and keeps only a session id in a cookie, usually PHPSESSID. Use $_SESSION for login state and cart data, after calling session_start(). Use cookies only for non-sensitive preferences, and mark session cookies HttpOnly, Secure and SameSite.
32
How do arrow functions differ from regular functions?
Arrow functions have shorter syntax, an implicit return for single expressions, and no own this, arguments or super; they inherit these from the outer scope. They cannot be used as constructors with new and do not have a prototype property. This makes them ideal for callbacks like array.map, but unsuitable for object methods that need this to refer to the object, or for event handlers that rely on this as the element.
33
Why should external links opened with target='_blank' use rel='noopener'?
When a page opens a link in a new tab, the new page historically got access to window.opener and could redirect the original tab to a phishing page, an attack called reverse tabnabbing. Adding rel='noopener' removes that reference, and noreferrer also hides the referring URL. Modern browsers apply noopener by default for target='_blank', but adding it explicitly is still good practice for older browsers.
34
An API is being called twice when the page loads. How do you debug it?
I would open the Network tab and check the Initiator column to see which code triggered each request. Common causes are the script being included twice, an event listener attached twice, a function called on both DOMContentLoaded and load, or a framework's development mode running effects twice. I would add a breakpoint or console.trace inside the fetch function, fix the root cause, and add a guard flag only if truly needed.
35
Make a header that sticks to the top while scrolling.
position: sticky keeps the header in normal flow until it reaches the top:
.site-header {
position: sticky;
top: 0;
z-index: 100;
background: #fff;
box-shadow: 0 2px 6px rgba(0,0,0,0.08);
}
Sticky fails if any ancestor has overflow: hidden or overflow: auto, so check parents when it does not work. Setting a background prevents content showing through while scrolling.
36
Tell me about a time you had to work with messy legacy code.
Situation: I joined a project with a 10-year-old PHP codebase full of mixed HTML and SQL. Task: I needed to add online payments without breaking existing features. Action: I wrote tests around the checkout flow first, extracted database code into a small class using PDO, and added the payment module separately. Result: payments launched with no regressions, and the team adopted the same approach for later changes.
Few big employers listed in Bhubaneswar?
Many Bhubaneswar candidates also apply to teams in Kolkata and to remote or hybrid roles. Practise the Kolkata set as well.
Which companies hire Web Development professionals in Bhubaneswar?
Companies with large offices in Bhubaneswar include many IT services and product firms. Use their company pages below to practise employer-specific sets.
Are Web Development interviews in Bhubaneswar different from other cities?
The questions depend more on the company than the city. Bhubaneswar's mix of employers decides the style: Freshers make up a big share of hiring, so fundamentals and aptitude rounds matter most
How do I find Web Development jobs in Bhubaneswar?
Shortlist companies with Bhubaneswar offices, keep your CV focused on Web Development projects, apply on company career pages and job portals with the Bhubaneswar filter, and practise the questions on this page before each interview.