What potential pitfalls should be considered when developing a PHP-based ticketing system with limited seat availability?

One potential pitfall to consider when developing a PHP-based ticketing system with limited seat availability is the risk of race conditions when multiple users try to book the same seat simultaneously. To mitigate this risk, you can implement a locking mechanism to ensure that only one user can book a seat at a time. This can be achieved by using PHP sessions to track the booking process and prevent conflicts. 

// Check if the seat is available before booking
if ($seat_available) {
    // Start a session to lock the booking process
    session_start();
    
    // Check if the seat is still available
    if ($seat_available) {
        // Book the seat
        bookSeat($seat_id);
        
        // Release the lock by ending the session
        session_destroy();
    } else {
        // Seat is no longer available, inform the user
        echo "Seat is no longer available. Please choose another seat.";
    }
} else {
    // Seat is not available, inform the user
    echo "Seat is not available. Please choose another seat.";
}

Keywords

Concurrency race condition session management database optimization error handling

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