🚀 My Experience Solving a HackerRank Senior Laravel Developer Test (Full Breakdown)

On February 19, I completed a HackerRank technical assessment for a Senior Back-End Developer (Laravel) role.

The challenge required building a simple blog management application using Laravel with Blade views, implementing a full CRUD workflow with validation and proper routing.

In this article, I’ll walk through:

• The test structure
• The requirements given in the challenge
• The Laravel architecture expected
• The implementation approach
• The key engineering concepts the test evaluates

This breakdown should help Laravel developers understand what companies expect during real technical assessments.

🧪 Test Overview

The HackerRank test started with a single challenge:

Laravel (Intermediate)

Task:

Implement a blog application with Blade views to manage blog articles.

Each blog entry contained the following properties:

🏗 Project Structure Provided in the Test

The environment already included a partially scaffolded Laravel application.

Key files provided:

app/Http/Controllers/BlogController.php
resources/views/home.blade.php
resources/views/blog.blade.php
resources/views/editblog.blade.php
routes/web.php
database/migrations/create_blogs_table.php
tests/Feature/BlogTest.php

The candidate had to complete controller logic and Blade views so that all automated tests passed.

📊 Database Migration

The migration file created a blogs table with the following schema:

Schema::create('blogs', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->id();
    $table->string('title');
    $table->string('author');
    $table->string('content');
    $table->timestamps();
});

🧭 Routes Provided in the Challenge

The routes were already configured inside routes/web.php.

Route::get('/', [BlogController::class, 'showBlogs'])->name('blogs');

Route::get('/blog', [BlogController::class, 'index'])->name('blog_index');

Route::post('/blog', [BlogController::class, 'create'])->name('blog_create');

Route::get('/blog/edit/{id}', [BlogController::class, 'edit'])->name('blog_edit');

Route::put('/blog/edit/{id}', [BlogController::class, 'update'])->name('blog_update');

Route::post('/blog/delete/{id}', [BlogController::class, 'destroy'])->name('blog_delete');

The task was to implement the controller logic and Blade templates.

🏠 Home Page Requirements

The home page (home.blade.php) had to display a table with the following columns:

Above the table, there had to be a Create Blog button.

Required Actions

Edit

GET /blog/edit/:id

Delete

POST /blog/delete/:id

✏️ Create Blog Page

The /blog route displayed a form for creating a new blog post.

Submit action:

POST /blog

🔍 Validation Rules

• title is required
• author is required
• content is required
• content must be at least 50 characters

Example Laravel validation:

$request->validate([
    'title' => 'required',
    'author' => 'required',
    'content' => 'required|min:50',
]);

📝 Editing a Blog Post

Edit route:

GET /blog/edit/:id

The page should display the existing blog data inside the form.

Updating the blog required:

PUT /blog/edit/:id

Validation rules were identical to the create request.

❌ Deleting a Blog

Delete route:

POST /blog/delete/:id

The controller needed to:

1. Find the blog by ID
2. Delete the record
3. Redirect to home

🧠 Controller Implementation Example

public function create(Request $request)
{
    $request->validate([
        'title' => 'required',
        'author' => 'required',
        'content' => 'required|min:50',
    ]);

    Blog::create([
        'title' => $request->title,
        'author' => $request->author,
        'content' => $request->content,
    ]);

    return redirect('/')->setStatusCode(201);
}

📋 What the Assessment Was Testing

1️⃣ MVC Architecture

• Models
• Controllers
• Views

2️⃣ RESTful Routing

• GET
• POST
• PUT

3️⃣ Laravel Validation

$request->validate()

4️⃣ Blade Templates

@foreach
@csrf
@method('PUT')

5️⃣ CRUD Operations

⏱ Test Difficulty

Overall difficulty: Intermediate

• Strict automated tests
• Exact route behavior required
• Response status codes checked
• Blade markup structure validated

Even small mistakes can cause multiple test failures.

🎯 Key Takeaways for Laravel Developers

• Laravel routing
• Blade templating
• Request validation
• CRUD controllers
• Database migrations
• HTTP status codes
• Writing clean MVC structure

🧩 Why Companies Use Tests Like This

• Do they understand Laravel conventions?
• Can they structure MVC properly?
• Do they know validation and routing best practices?
• Can they implement clean maintainable code quickly?

Senior developers are expected to solve tasks like this very quickly and cleanly.

🧑‍💻 Final Thoughts

Even though this challenge was relatively small, it effectively tested the core Laravel development workflow.

These types of assessments are common for backend roles using Laravel, and practicing similar tasks can significantly improve your interview performance.

If you're preparing for Laravel interviews, practice implementing small systems like this:

• CRUD applications
• Form validation
• RESTful routes
• Blade UI components

Mastering these basics makes real-world Laravel development much easier.