Pro PHP Security: From Application Security Principles to the Implementation of XSS Defenses, Second Edition

Avoiding Record Deletion

In most database-driven applications, users are able to delete records from the system. These records may represent everything from the contents of a shopping cart to the articles in a CMS. Whatever they are, they are probably pretty important to you and your operation. Even something as seemingly disposable as an item in a shopping cart has importance as a record in the database: if it is deleted, how will you know that the user was considering the purchase?

Of course, adding the ability to recover from accidental or on-purpose deletions makes even more sense when applied to the articles in a Content Management System. Part of an editor's job is to remove articles from the system, so the ability to delete using the web ...