Who Are We?
At FYXR, we’re professional bug squashers, code exterminators, and late-night-debugging survivors. We know that bugs aren’t just creepy crawlies in your kitchen, they’re the little pests hiding in your codebase, waiting to break your demo five minutes before launch. That’s why we created FYXR: to help you hunt them down, squash them fast, and maybe even laugh about it along the way. If it’s buggy, we’re on it.
Bug Of The Week: The Dreaded N+1 Query in Laravel
One of the most common bugs in Laravel applications isn’t a crash or an exception, it’s a performance killer. Everything looks fine in development, but when the app hits production, a single page suddenly starts hammering the database with dozens or even hundreds of queries.
This is the classic N+1 query problem. It usually shows up when looping through a relationship without eager loading. For example, if you grab a list of users and then access each user’s posts inside the loop, Laravel will fire one query for the users and then another query for each user’s posts. With 100 users, that’s 101 queries instead of just 2.
Why It Happens:
Laravel’s ORM (Eloquent) is lazy by default. It doesn’t automatically know that you’ll need related data ahead of time, so unless you explicitly tell it to, it won’t fetch those relationships efficiently.
The Fix:
// The problem:
$users = User::all();
foreach ($users as $user) {
echo $user->posts->count();
}
// The fix:
$users = User::with('posts')->get();
foreach ($users as $user) {
echo $user->posts->count();
}By eager loading the posts relationship with with('posts'), you reduce the number of queries dramatically.
Takeaway:
Keep an eye on your database queries using Laravel Telescope or a package like Debugbar. If you see the query count spiking during loops, you’ve likely stumbled into an N+1 bug. It won’t throw an error, but it will make your app crawl.
Debugging Tool of the Week: Chrome DevTools Performance Profiler
Frontend performance issues can be some of the hardest bugs to pin down. A page feels sluggish, animations look choppy, or a script seems to drag — but where do you start?
The Performance Profiler in Chrome DevTools is an underused gem. It records a detailed timeline of everything happening in your web app: JavaScript execution, rendering, painting, layout recalculations, and more.
Why It’s Useful:
You can see exactly how long each script, function, or process takes to run.
It highlights expensive operations like forced reflows or layout thrashing.
You can capture a snapshot of memory usage to catch leaks in single-page apps.
How to Use It:
Open DevTools, go to the Performance tab.
Click “Record” and interact with your page.
Stop recording and analyze the flame chart.
Pro Tip: Filter by “scripting” to find out which JavaScript functions are hogging CPU time. Bugs love to hide in performance bottlenecks, and the profiler makes them impossible to ignore.
Service Of The Week: Postman
When it comes to working with APIs, many developers start with curl. It’s quick and simple, until you need to juggle headers, tokens, multiple environments, and a long list of endpoints. That’s where Postman shines.
Why It Matters:
Postman lets you organize all of your API requests into collections.
You can set up variables for dev, staging, and production environments.
Automated tests can be added to requests, so regressions are caught early.
Teams can share collections, ensuring everyone tests with the same inputs.
Instead of copy-pasting curl commands or guessing if your request was correct, Postman gives you a reliable, visual workflow for debugging APIs.
Real-World Example:
Imagine debugging a payment integration. Instead of running the same curl commands over and over, you save them in a Postman collection. Each time you tweak a header or token, you hit send and instantly see the response, with detailed timing information.
For any developer working with APIs, and that’s nearly all of us, Postman is less of a convenience and more of a necessity.
Quick Fix Tip:
The problem: You accidentally committed sensitive files like .env or credentials to Git. Even if you delete the file and recommit, it’s still in your history.
The fix:
git filter-branch --force --index-filter \
"git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch .env" \
--prune-empty --tag-name-filter cat -- --allThis command rewrites your history to remove the file. But remember: once a secret has leaked, it’s no longer safe. You should rotate your keys immediately.
Lesson: Always double-check your .gitignore file. It’s your first line of defense against these bugs.
IDE Spotlight: REST Client for VS Code
Debugging APIs often means switching between your editor and an external tool like Postman or curl. But what if you could test API endpoints directly from your IDE?
That’s what the REST Client extension for VS Code provides.
How It Works:
Create a
.httpor.restfile in your project.Write requests in plain text:
GET https://api.example.com/users
Authorization: Bearer {{token}}Hover over the request and click “Send Request.” The response appears inline in VS Code.
Why It’s Great:
You never have to leave your editor. You can keep your requests version-controlled with your code, and share them with teammates. It’s lightweight, simple, and perfect for quick debugging sessions.
Dev Tool Box
JSONLint
Malformed JSON can cause frustrating errors in APIs and config files. JSONLint validates and formats JSON instantly. Paste your JSON in, and it tells you exactly where the error is. A lifesaver when debugging a 500 response caused by a missing comma..
GitIgnore.io
Tired of hand-writing .gitignore files? GitIgnore.io generates them for nearly any framework, language, or IDE. From Laravel to React Native, it has you covered. Save yourself from committing unnecessary files before they ever make it into your repo.
Did You Know? In 1999, NASA lost the Mars Climate Orbiter because of a software bug caused by unit mismatch. One team used metric units, while another used imperial. The result: the spacecraft drifted off course and burned up in the Martian atmosphere.
The cost of this bug? $125 million.
It stands as one of the most famous cautionary tales in software history, and a reminder that even small assumptions can have catastrophic consequences.
Bugs aren’t going anywhere, but with the right mindset and the right tools, they don’t stand a chance. Keep squashing, keep shipping, and we’ll see you in next week’s issue of The FYXR Bug Report.
