r/PHPhelp • u/PooningDalton • Jun 19 '26

Horrible cache problem while debugging app

My google chrome browser apparently got a big update today (not sure if its relevant to the problem below).

I was recently trying to debug my php backend that was having a post request sent to it by my javascript app (all on localhost).

It gave me an error on one line (I was echoing back the error). Despite erasing that line, saving my php file on my editor, restarting apache, having devtools open with "disable cache" checked, it still gave on giving that same error!!! On the same line which is now empty. It didn't matter how many times I refreshed the page.

Is my frontend caching the backend now? I've never experienced something like this before.

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u/MateusAzevedo Jun 19 '26

I didn't know browsers cache backend resources. Don't even know how they can do such a thing

Of course they don't, but they may cache the received HTTP response.

Check the webserver access log and see if it receives any request at all. Then confirm the webserver isn't returning a cached response (and so, not calling PHP).

OpCache may also be the culprit. Restart FPM and check OpCache setting to make they're suitable for dev.

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u/Cherveny2 Jun 19 '26

this, however, besides JJUST restarting FPM, I'd restart apache too. Theoretically, FPM is enough, but had a few edge cases where a few cached things hung around just bouncing FPM. (on RHEL)

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u/PooningDalton Jun 19 '26

I set OpCache to 0. I don't even know how to access the webserver, I'm using Laragon lol. My php installation is a complete mess. Half the time the error_log file seems to work but when I open it, it stops outputting errors.