Forms

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PHP Intermediate

Instant Search Done Right: Debounce, Abort, Escape, Limit

Search-as-you-type touches four failure modes at once - request spam, stale responses, LIKE wildcards and unbounded scans. The complete pattern, both sides of the wire.

May 26, 2026 3 min 326 Read →

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PHP Advanced

CSRF Protection from Scratch: What the Frameworks Are Doing for You

A hidden token, a session comparison, a header for AJAX - the whole defense is 30 lines of PHP and JS. Build it once by hand and framework CSRF errors stop being mysterious.

May 18, 2026 2 min 166 Read →

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CSS Beginner

field-sizing: content - Auto-Growing Textareas With Zero JavaScript

Every chat box and comment field ships JS that measures scrollHeight to grow the textarea. One CSS property now does it natively - with a progressive-enhancement story for the rest.

Dec 8, 2025 2 min 907 Read →

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CSS Intermediate

Floating Labels with :placeholder-shown (No JavaScript, No Wrappers)

The material-style label that sits in the field and floats up when you type is a pure CSS pattern - one pseudo-class, one sibling selector, one transition.

Oct 21, 2025 2 min 331 Read →

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JavaScript Intermediate

The Form Validation API You Already Shipped

required, pattern and type attributes feed a full JavaScript API: custom error messages, on-your-terms timing, and async checks - without a validation library.

May 9, 2025 2 min 1,699 Read →

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PHP Intermediate

A Real Upload Progress Bar with XMLHttpRequest and PHP

fetch() still cannot report upload progress reliably - but XMLHttpRequest has done it for fifteen years. The full pattern: progress events, a PHP receiver, and the config limits that silently break big uploads.

Dec 8, 2024 2 min 2,906 Read →

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PHP Intermediate

Never Trust a File Extension: Real MIME Detection in PHP

A PHP script renamed to photo.jpg sails past extension checks. finfo reads the actual bytes. Here is the upload validation layer cake that actually holds.

Oct 16, 2024 2 min 1,883 Read →

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CSS Beginner

Theme Every Checkbox and Radio with One CSS Line

Custom checkbox hacks - hidden inputs, pseudo-element ticks, sprite images - solved a problem that accent-color now handles in a single declaration.

Jun 5, 2024 2 min 3,802 Read →

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CSS Intermediate

:has() Is the Parent Selector We Waited Twenty Years For

Style a form field wrapper based on the input inside it, a card based on whether it has an image, a layout based on its content - all in pure CSS with :has().

May 28, 2024 2 min 4,641 Read →

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JavaScript Beginner

Serialize an Entire Form in One Line with FormData

new FormData(form) reads every field in one call, posts natively with fetch, and Object.fromEntries turns it into JSON. You may never write form.elements loops again.

Apr 25, 2024 2 min 3,258 Read →

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JavaScript Intermediate

Let Users Paste Screenshots Straight into Your App

Ctrl+V with an image on the clipboard fires a paste event carrying a real File object. Ten lines of code turn any form into a screenshot-friendly uploader.

Apr 12, 2024 2 min 4,952 Read →