Practical notes and questions about building websites, applications, APIs, databases, and CMS platforms.
A PHP endpoint has selected the correct PDF, checked that the current user may download it, and is ready to send the response. One small question remains: what should the saved file be called? It is tempting to place a database title directly after filename=.…
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A list can look stable while someone reads it and still move underneath the pagination controls. Suppose page one shows the newest 20 artic…
Two database transactions can each be valid on their own and still become unable to continue when they run together. One holds a lock the o…
A post row says its author is user 42, but user 42 does not exist. The application can hide the missing name, return an error, or quietly s…
One article can quietly acquire several addresses. A tracking parameter creates one URL, a print view creates another, and an old route may…
A form saves a new record, the browser shows a success page, and then someone presses refresh. Should that refresh display the result again…
A large download stops halfway. The local file is still there, so asking for only the missing bytes sounds obvious. But what if the file be…
A deployment replaces PHP files on disk, but that does not by itself answer which compiled instructions a long-running PHP process will exe…
An application can finish generating a response quickly while the person downloading it is on a slow connection. Who should wait in that si…
Two people open the same article in an editor. Both see revision 17. One fixes the introduction and saves revision 18. The other, still loo…
