Database Design: Multiple tables vs a single table

Question

I am making a website where there are different types of items such as blogs, posts, articles and so on. A user can set any one of them as his/her favorite. Now when I appro

Answer 1

I have this design on my website. My modules are: news, articles, videos, photos, downloads, reviews, quizzes, polls, etc etc. All in separate tables. I have a likes table where users can like or dislike a post (in your case favorites). The query to get these isn't that complicated.

First off for the most part MOST of my tables for the modules are structured the same way:

• id
• title
• content
• user_id (author)
• date
• etc

with a few exceptions being that sometimes title is called question or there is no content column. That does not cause any issues.

My likes tables is set up like this:

• id
• page_id
• module_id (what table did it come from...I have a modules table where each module has a title, associated id, directory, etc)
• post_id (corresponds to the module table id)
• user_id (user who did the liking or posting)
• status (0 = like, 1 = dislike)
• date (when the liking/disliking took place)

Modules table example:

• id
• title
• directory
• post_type

Example

id      title              directory         post_type
 1       News                news               news
 2     Episode Guide       episodes            episode
 3       Albums           discography/albums    album

Essentially yours would have a similar set up, modifying the table structure as necessary for your needs.

Query to get all the likes or favorites for a particular user:

$getlikes = mysql_query("SELECT DISTINCT post_id, module_id, page_id FROM likes WHERE user_id = $profile_id ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT $offset, $likes_limit", $conn);
$likes = mysql_num_rows($getlikes);

if($likes == "0"){
echo "
$profile_username does not have any liked posts at this time.
";
}
else {
echo "";

while ($rowlikes = mysql_fetch_assoc($getlikes)) {
   // echo data

$like_page_id = $rowlikes['page_id'];
$like_module_id = $rowlikes['module_id'];
$like_post_id = $rowlikes['post_id'];


// different modules have different fields for the "title", most are called title but quotes is called "content" and polls is called "questions"
if($like_module_id == "11"){
$field = "question";
}
elseif($like_module_id == "19"){
$field = "content";
}
else{
$field = "title";
}





// FUNCTIONS
PostURL($like_page_id, $like_module_id, $like_post_id);
ModTitle($like_module_id);
ModTable($like_module_id);
ModURL($like_page_id, $like_module_id);
fpgURL($like_page_id);


$getpostinfo = mysql_query("SELECT $field AS field FROM $mod_table WHERE id = $like_post_id", $conn);
$rowpostinfo = mysql_fetch_assoc($getpostinfo);
$like_post_title = $rowpostinfo['field'];

// Using my "tiny" function to shorten the title if the module is "Quotes"
if($like_module_id == "19"){
Tiny($like_post_title, "75");
$like_post_title = "\"$tiny\"";
}


if(!$like_post_title){
$like_post_title = "Unknown";
}
else {
$like_post_title = "$like_post_title";
}

echo "";

$altrow = ($altrow == 'altrow')?'':'altrow';

} // end while

echo "


Post
Module
Page

$like_post_title
$mod_title
$fpg_url


";

// FUNCTIONS - Pagination links
PaginationLinks("$cs_url/users/$profile_id", "likes");

echo "
";

} // end else if no likes

Ok that may be hard for you to understand since I have alot of my own variables, but basically it gets the module id and post id from the likes table and then runs a query to get the title of the post and any other info I want like the original author.

I have "module" functions set up that will return the url or the title of the module given you provide an id for it.