Both preference writers validated their array as ['required', 'array']
and looped updateOrCreate over it:
'widgets' => ['required', 'array'],
'widgets.*.widget_key' => ['required', 'string', Rule::in(WIDGET_KEYS)],
Rule::in answers "is this a key I know", once per element. It says
nothing about how many elements there are, and nothing about whether they
repeat -- so a request could name the same valid key any number of times
and buy a SELECT and an UPDATE for each one.
Measured on this base, sent as JSON (a form-encoded array that size is
truncated by max_input_vars long before it reaches the controller):
widgets 10 entries 37 queries 1 row
500 entries 1044 queries 1 row
3000 entries 7051 queries 1 row
notifications 10 entries 23 queries 1 row
2000 entries 2025 queries 1 row
One row, every time. The work is not even data growth -- 3000 entries
write the same single row 3000 times, because updateOrCreate matches on
(user_id, widget_key) and every element after the first is an update of
what the one before it just wrote.
Neither route is behind a throttle: bootstrap/app.php applies
throttleApi() to the API group only, /dashboard/widgets is behind `auth`
alone and /settings/notifications is deliberately outside the `staff`
group, since every account manages its own. So the weakest account on the
installation -- a client with no permission at all -- can reach both, and
the only ceiling is post_max_size.
Both are bounded by the list they already validate against, not by a
number:
- widgets by count(self::WIDGET_KEYS), the same constant Rule::in reads.
- preferences by count($this->emailableKeys()), because
NotificationTypeRegistry is deliberately open -- "never a closed enum,
since core must not need to know a package's notification type keys at
compile time" -- so a literal would be wrong the day a module
registers one.
`distinct` on the key does the other half: a layout has at most one entry
per widget, which is what the screen sends and what the loop assumes.
After: 3000 entries cost 30 queries and write nothing, refused with a 422
instead of half-applied.
Two findings, one cause, one change -- they are the same three words in
two modules, and splitting them would leave the rule stated once and
broken once. Tests live with each controller: two refusals each, both
failing against the unfixed controllers, plus one for the largest
legitimate submission -- a full nine-widget layout, and every emailable
type at once -- so the bound can never be tighter than the screen.
update() validated preferences.*.type as ['required', 'string'], so any
string at all became a row in notification_preferences. Nothing reads it
afterwards: emailEnabledFor() looks preferences up by a key the registry
knows, so a row under an unknown key is invisible for good.
It is not a way into somebody else's settings — user_id comes from the
session, never the payload — which is why this is validation rather than
authorization. The cost is a table that quietly accumulates rows nobody
can see, explain, or remove through the interface.
edit() already knew the answer. It filters the registry down to the types
that can email at all, by either route, and renders exactly those as
toggles. That list is now derived once and used by both halves, so what
the screen offers and what it accepts back cannot drift apart.
Rejecting a registered-but-unmailable key (client_uploaded is the one in
tree) is deliberate rather than incidental: FilesServiceProvider explains
that it has no mail companion on purpose, so a preference row for it
could never change what anybody receives.
Failed queue jobs and read notifications both grow with use, and neither
ever shrank on its own. The failed-jobs list waited for somebody to press
"Delete all failed" — a fine tool for a backlog you are looking at, and
the only thing that ever emptied it. Notifications had nothing at all: one
row per recipient per event, kept for the life of the installation, on
what is easily the fastest-growing table here.
Both now have a retention window, set together on the Scheduler screen
under Housekeeping, and a nightly purge that honours it. Thirty days for
failed jobs and ninety for read notifications, and zero means keep
everything — the explicit choice somebody makes when a failure is evidence
rather than debris.
Unread notifications are never deleted, whatever their age. A notification
nobody has looked at is the one row in that table still doing its job, and
somebody back from four months away should find their news rather than a
clean slate. The activity log is untouched by any of this: it is an audit
trail, and it is never pruned.
Two things came out of building it. The API request log purge has been
running nightly since it shipped without ever appearing on the Scheduler
screen — so a failure of it was invisible on the screen that exists to
make failures visible — and there is now a test asserting the screen's
list and the schedule are the same list, because they had already drifted
once and would again.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Client file sharing, rebuilt from the ground up: a private area per
client, resumable uploads, folders, groups and categories, sharing with
expiry dates and download limits, comments, file versions, an activity
log, a REST API, and sixteen languages.
This repository begins here. ProjectSend 2 was developed privately, and
that development history is not published — the previous generation
remains available, with its own history, at projectsend/legacy.
Free software under the GNU General Public License v2, or (at your
option) any later version.
denkfabrik-li