The DS18B20 is a digital temperature sensor that comes in two versions: a small TO-92 package, and a waterproof variant often encased in a metal tube with a long cable. Both provide digital temperature readings and can be used in many indoor and outdoor projects. The DS18B20 uses a protocol called 1-Wire, which only needs one data line to communicate and can support multiple sensors on the same pin.
CQRS, short for Command Query Responsibility Segregation, is a simple yet powerful way to split the responsibility for writing and reading data in an application. Instead of having a single service or model method that both changes and retrieves data, you give commands the job of making changes and queries the job of fetching information. This split can make large projects much easier to follow, especially as business rules grow and read and write requirements start to differ.
HMAC, short for Hash-based Message Authentication Code, is a method used to check that a message is both authentic and unmodified. It's a common tool in webhooks, APIs, and any place where secure communication between systems matters. The idea behind HMAC is to use a shared secret key along with a hashing algorithm to create a unique signature for a message. This signature acts like a stamp of trust, if anything changes in the message or if the wrong key is used, the signature won't match.
As a Laravel project grows, it is common to see the same small functions repeated in multiple places such as formatting values, checking routes, or handling basic text transformations. Instead of scattering these across controllers or traits, a more structured approach is to collect them into a dedicated helper file. While Laravel does not include a default setup for this, Composer's autoload configuration makes it straightforward to register a custom helper file. This ensures those functions are always available throughout the application without manual includes.
Indexes are one of the tools MySQL uses to make data access faster. Without them, the database engine has to scan every row in a table to find matching records. This kind of full scan can be slow, especially when dealing with large datasets. Indexes allow MySQL to skip most of the table and go straight to the rows it needs. They're not just about speed, though. Indexes also help with enforcing uniqueness, sorting results, and supporting specific types of queries. But they come with trade-offs, like extra storage use and slower write operations.
