Missing Pagination

Difficulty: Easy — 1 fix

What This Challenge Is

The GET /db/users endpoint returns every user in the database with no limit. On a small dataset that's harmless. On a production table with 100,000 rows it exhausts memory and takes seconds. Add pagination using LIMIT and OFFSET so callers can request one page at a time.

Load the broken file:

php artisan challenge:start db-missing-pagination

This adds:

• app/Http/controllers/db/users/index.php — GET /db/users

Start the dev server (php artisan serve) and visit http://localhost:8000/db/users to see the unpaginated response.

The Bug

No LIMIT or OFFSET in the query

// BROKEN — returns every row in the table
$users = $db->query(
    'SELECT id, name, email, created_at FROM users ORDER BY created_at DESC'
)->get();

Fix: Read ?page= and ?limit= from the request. Calculate the offset. Add LIMIT :limit OFFSET :offset to the query. Return page and limit alongside the data.

// CORRECT
$page   = max(1, (int)($_GET['page']  ?? 1));
$limit  = max(1, min(100, (int)($_GET['limit'] ?? 10)));
$offset = ($page - 1) * $limit;

$users = $db->query(
    'SELECT id, name, email, created_at FROM users ORDER BY created_at DESC LIMIT :limit OFFSET :offset',
    ['limit' => $limit, 'offset' => $offset]
)->get();

header('Content-Type: application/json');
echo json_encode([
    'data'  => $users,
    'page'  => $page,
    'limit' => $limit,
]);

File to Edit

• app/Http/controllers/db/users/index.php

Verify Your Solution

php artisan challenge:verify

The verifier checks:

• LIMIT is in the query
• OFFSET is in the query
• :limit named parameter is used
• :offset named parameter is used
• json_encode is called

Testing Manually

With php artisan serve running:

# Default: page 1, limit 10
curl http://localhost:8000/db/users

# Page 2, 5 per page
curl "http://localhost:8000/db/users?page=2&limit=5"

Expected response shape:

{
  "data": [...],
  "page": 1,
  "limit": 10
}

Hints

• ($page - 1) * $limit converts a 1-based page number to a row offset
• Always cap the limit with min(100, ...) — don't let callers pull unlimited rows
• Both LIMIT and OFFSET must use named parameters (:limit, :offset), not raw values inline
• max(1, ...) prevents negative or zero page numbers from producing nonsense offsets