Sometimes you need to attach a header to every Turbo request (like a feature-flag variant, or a client version). Turbo emits turbo:before-fetch-request, which lets you mutate the outgoing request before it is sent. I keep the handler tiny and global (

Auditing isn’t just “save everything”. Capture who did it, what changed, and why. Rails gives you dirty tracking; store diffs in a JSON column. Keep it minimal to avoid ballooning storage.

I like API routes that read like tiny, well-scoped controllers. In Next.js Route Handlers, I keep auth and input parsing right at the top, then return explicit status codes instead of throwing for expected failures. I also avoid leaking server-only de

Custom actions extend viewsets beyond CRUD operations. I use @action decorator with detail=True/False for object-level or collection-level actions. This creates endpoints like /posts/1/publish/ or /posts/recent/. I specify HTTP methods, permissions, a

For forms with multiple fields, I like an error summary at the top. With Turbo Streams, you can update just the summary target when validation fails. This is helpful when the form is long and the user might not see inline errors immediately. The serve

Some read paths want a denormalized shape without materializing a new table. Postgres views are a clean option. Keep the view definition in a migration and map it with a read-only model.

Mixins let me compose view behavior without duplication. LoginRequiredMixin is essential for protecting views. I create custom mixins like UserOwnershipMixin to encapsulate common patterns. Mixin order matters due to Python's MRO—I put Django's mixins

Multipart uploads can blow up memory if you parse them naively. With busboy, I stream file data as it arrives and enforce size limits and content-type checks early. I avoid writing to disk unless I need it; for many flows I stream directly to object s

Not all queries benefit from a full-table index, especially when most rows are ‘inactive’ or archived. A partial index lets you index only the subset you care about (like active users or un-deleted records), which shrinks index size and improves cache

For slow endpoints, I like a skeleton placeholder rather than a blank area. Turbo Frames make this easy: render a “loading skeleton” inside the frame tag as the initial content, then set src so Turbo fetches the real content. When the response arrives

JWT tokens provide stateless authentication for APIs. I use djangorestframework-simplejwt for token generation and validation. The TokenObtainPairView issues access and refresh tokens on login. I configure token lifetimes in settings. For protected en

The fastest way to surprise yourself in production is ADD COLUMN ... NOT NULL DEFAULT ... on a large table. My safe pattern is: add the column nullable with no default, backfill in batches, then add the NOT NULL constraint. If I need a default for new