PHP - Help With Friends System

[masterjake]

Does anyone know how to do a friends system. This is how I was going to setup mine but doing it this way I will need a little help.

When you add a friend it updates a database entry with your friends and adds exactly this "#friend,". I do it this way because some people have spaces in there name but no one has a # in their name as its forbidden in my registration script. Now when the time comes to view there friends I need it to go into that entry, break up all of the friends removing the #'s and ,'s and then add them into an array so I can do sql querys on the array and get the id of each friend so I can put a link to their profiles on the view friends page. Can someone help?

 

[xmakina]

First, use an auto_increment integer for a unique key for each user. This is called the primary key and is used to link rows to each other.

To create a friend list, simple create your user table and then create a friend table with columns userID and friendID. Place the users ID number (that is, the one that is created through auto_increment) in userID and the friends ID number in friendID. And there you go. One friend list

 

[freecrm]

Does anyone know how to do a friends system. This is how I was going to setup mine but doing it this way I will need a little help.

When you add a friend it updates a database entry with your friends and adds exactly this "#friend,". I do it this way because some people have spaces in there name but no one has a # in their name as its forbidden in my registration script. Now when the time comes to view there friends I need it to go into that entry, break up all of the friends removing the #'s and ,'s and then add them into an array so I can do sql querys on the array and get the id of each friend so I can put a link to their profiles on the view friends page. Can someone help?

xmakina is right - the array system is too cumbersome.

When you want to show all the friends for the user signed in, you just create a recordset where the userid == the uniqueid of the person logged in.

 

[masterjake]

Yeah but I don't want to create an individual table for each user, that get's too annoying and large to keep up with, i'd rather do the arrays.

 

[freecrm]

Yeah but I don't want to create an individual table for each user, that get's too annoying and large to keep up with, i'd rather do the arrays.

You don't need to - all you need is one friends table - the links between your existing user table and the friends table will do the work for you.

When you click on add friend, you simply insert a record to the friends table, carrying the unique ID from the user table for the logged in user and the unique ID of the "friend".

recordset:

SELECT * FROM FRIENDS WHERE LINKUSERID LIKE $_SESSION['userid']

This will show all friends for the selected user. (based on session but can be from a link or post.)

 

[xmakina]

SELECT * FROM FRIENDS WHERE LINKUSERID = $_SESSION['userid']

We're dealing with numbers and don't want to risk user 1 getting user 11's friends.

And Jake, I highly recommend you read up on some database theory before plunging into something like this. You don't sound very clued up on how a database should be structured and organised and without those critical foundations your structure will quickly tumble down.

 

[masterjake]

Naww its cool ;] thanks for the replies I've been using DB's quite a well I understand what they mean by the friends table now.

 

[freecrm]

SELECT * FROM FRIENDS WHERE LINKUSERID = $_SESSION['userid']

We're dealing with numbers and don't want to risk user 1 getting user 11's friends.
quote]

Interesting - I thought this was comparing two absolute values ??

I obviously need to read up more on numbers..

 

[Livewire]

Interesting - I thought this was comparing two absolute values ??

I obviously need to read up more on numbers..

He is; read the post above his.

SELECT * FROM FRIENDS WHERE LINKUSERID LIKE $_SESSION['userid']

He changed Like to =; like would match 1 to 1, 11, 111, 1111, and if I'm not mistaken numbers like 1245 as well. = makes it absolute like you pointed out, which is what we needed

 

[xmakina]

It's not so much that it *DOES* match 1 to 11, 111, 1111 and so on as it *MIGHT*. Sure in MySQL it doesn't because it uses wildcards and symbols (e.g. LIKE '1*'), but who knows what variations of SQL will come along. One might think the use of LIKE means *STRING* and therefore 1 will match 1, 12, 113, etc etc.