🌙 NightmareMart

A Laravel 12 application with intentional production bugs for debugging education.

Warning: This application contains 10 intentional bugs! It's designed for learning how to debug real-world production issues.

📋 Overview

NightmareMart is a realistic e-commerce application built with Laravel 12 that demonstrates common production nightmares. Each "episode" focuses on a specific bug pattern that developers encounter in the real world.

🐛 The 10 Episodes

Episode	Bug	Description
1	Config Caching	env() returns null after config:cache
2	N+1 Queries	Admin orders page triggers thousands of queries
3	Authorization Hole	Regular users can refund orders
4	Race Conditions	Two users can buy the last item in stock
5	Cache Key Collision	Users see each other's cart totals
6	Memory Leak	Queue worker crashes after ~50 orders
7	Timezone Nightmare	International users see wrong dates
8	Log Explosion	Debug logging fills the disk
9	Search Performance	One search query takes down the site
10	Money Bug	Floating-point math causes penny discrepancies

🚀 Quick Start

Requirements

• PHP 8.2+
• Composer 2.6+
• Node.js 20+ (for asset compilation)
• SQLite (default) or MySQL 8.0+

Installation

# Clone the repository
git clone <repo-url> nightmare-mart
cd nightmare-mart

# Install PHP dependencies
composer install

# Copy environment file
cp .env.example .env

# Generate application key
php artisan key:generate

# Create SQLite database
touch database/database.sqlite

# Run migrations
php artisan migrate

# Seed the database (creates 10,000+ products, 5,000+ orders)
php artisan db:seed

# Start the development server
php artisan serve

Test Accounts

After seeding, these accounts are available:

Role	Email	Password
Admin	admin@nightmaremart.test	password
User	user@nightmaremart.test	password

🔍 Bug Locations

Episode 1: Config Caching

• File: app/Http/Controllers/CheckoutController.php
• Line: $taxRate = env('TAX_RATE', 0.08);
• Fix: Use config('shop.tax_rate') instead

Episode 2: N+1 Queries

• File: app/Http/Controllers/Admin/OrderController.php
• Symptom: Admin orders page is extremely slow
• Fix: Add eager loading with ->with(['user', 'items.product'])

Episode 3: Authorization Hole

• File: routes/web.php
• Line: Route::post('/{order}/refund', ...)->name('refund');
• Fix: Add ->middleware('admin') to the route

Episode 4: Race Conditions

• File: app/Http/Controllers/CheckoutController.php
• Symptom: Inventory goes negative under concurrent load
• Fix: Use lockForUpdate() in a transaction

Episode 5: Cache Key Collision

• File: app/Services/CartService.php
• Line: Cache::remember('cart_total', ...)
• Fix: Scope cache key to user: "cart_total_{$userId}"

Episode 6: Memory Leak

• File: app/Jobs/GenerateBulkReceiptsJob.php
• Symptom: Queue worker crashes with memory exhaustion
• Fix: Use lazy() or chunk() instead of get()

Episode 7: Timezone Nightmare

• Files: Various views showing $order->placed_at
• Symptom: Dates show in UTC instead of user's timezone
• Fix: Use $order->placed_at->timezone(auth()->user()->timezone)

Episode 8: Log Explosion

• File: config/logging.php
• Symptom: Log file grows to GB in size
• Fix: Use daily channel and set LOG_LEVEL=warning in production

Episode 9: Search Performance

• File: app/Http/Controllers/SearchController.php
• Line: Product::where('name', 'LIKE', "%{$query}%")->get()
• Fix: Add pagination, limits, and full-text search indexes

Episode 10: Money Bug

• Files: CheckoutController.php, OrderCalculator.php
• Symptom: Order totals don't match line items
• Fix: Use integer cents, not floating-point dollars

📁 Project Structure

nightmare-mart/
├── app/
│   ├── Http/
│   │   ├── Controllers/
│   │   │   ├── Admin/           # Admin controllers
│   │   │   ├── Auth/            # Authentication
│   │   │   ├── CartController.php
│   │   │   ├── CheckoutController.php  # Episodes 1, 4
│   │   │   ├── OrderController.php     # Episode 3
│   │   │   └── SearchController.php    # Episode 9
│   │   └── Middleware/
│   │       └── IsAdmin.php      # Episode 3
│   ├── Jobs/
│   │   └── GenerateBulkReceiptsJob.php  # Episode 6
│   ├── Models/                  # Eloquent models
│   ├── Policies/
│   │   └── OrderPolicy.php      # Episode 3
│   ├── Services/
│   │   ├── CartService.php      # Episode 5
│   │   └── OrderCalculator.php  # Episode 10
│   └── ValueObjects/
│       └── Money.php            # Episode 10 fix
├── config/
│   ├── logging.php              # Episode 8
│   └── shop.php                 # Episode 1
├── database/
│   ├── migrations/
│   ├── factories/
│   └── seeders/
│       └── NightmareMartSeeder.php
├── resources/views/
│   ├── layouts/
│   │   ├── app.blade.php        # Main layout
│   │   └── admin.blade.php      # Admin layout
│   ├── admin/                   # Admin views
│   ├── auth/                    # Login/Register
│   ├── cart/
│   ├── checkout/
│   ├── orders/
│   ├── products/
│   └── search/
└── routes/
    └── web.php                  # Episode 3 bug

🛠️ Development Commands

# Run development server
php artisan serve

# Run queue worker (for Episode 6 testing)
php artisan queue:work

# Clear config cache (Episode 1)
php artisan config:clear

# Cache config (triggers Episode 1 bug)
php artisan config:cache

# Monitor slow queries
php artisan db:monitor

# Fresh migration with seeding
php artisan migrate:fresh --seed

🎓 Learning Path

1. Start with Episode 1 - Understand environment/config basics
2. Episode 2 - Learn database query optimization
3. Episode 3 - Security and authorization
4. Episode 4 - Concurrency and database locking
5. Episode 5 - Caching strategies
6. Episode 6 - Memory management
7. Episode 7 - Datetime/timezone handling
8. Episode 8 - Logging best practices
9. Episode 9 - Query performance
10. Episode 10 - Financial calculations

📺 Recording Setup

If using this for video content:

1. Install Laravel Debugbar for query visualization
2. Use the seeded data (10,000+ products) to demonstrate slowness
3. Test accounts with different timezones for Episode 7
4. Low-stock products (stock=1) for Episode 4 race conditions

🤝 Contributing

This is an educational project. Feel free to:

• Add more bug scenarios
• Improve the UI
• Add tests that catch the bugs
• Create fix branches for each episode

📄 License

MIT License - Feel free to use for learning and teaching!

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Happy Debugging! 🐛🔍