displaying forum results

Anon

Hi
I am developing a program in which the user can post his message.(Like discussion forum).
Any user can reply for this.If the user post the first message the message id will be 1.
The first reply will have the id value 2 and the next will have a id value 3... and so on.
Meanwhile if any one post a new message in between the third message(That is second reply for the first message) it's id will have a value 3.Now the second reply for the first message will have value 4.I have desined the database like this.

master database details

id
message_detail
posted date
...

Details database
id
parent_id
reply details
....

The id in both tables will be automatically incremented for each message.(The reply message also have new id and will have its corresponding parent id in the detail table.)

when the user visit to this message page i want to display all message details in the following order(like in this discussion forum).

message1
message2(reply for messge1)
message3(reply for message2)
message4(reply for message1)
message5 (new message)
...

Can anyone help me to do this.
Thanks your help in advance.

Anon

Well,

I suppose you'd better do it the way this forum or PHorum (http://www.phorum.org) does : A first post gets ID 1, replies to the post get ID 1-1, ID 1-2, ID 1-3 etc... Second post gets ID 2, replies to it get ID 2-1, 2-2 etc...

The DB design could be:
POSTS
id
message_detail
posted date
...

REPLIES
id
parent_id
reply details
...

where parent_id is the ID of the initial post. That way, no posts/replies get mixed up. I suppose, however, that you'll need another DB design to implement replies to replies...

HTH,

Steven

Anon

Can you please give some advice in what is the complete db field should be include? how to apply the 'parent' and 'child' id?

Thanks

svanpoeck

Ok, I hope I understood the question...

If you maintain two tables, one for the initial posts and a second for the replies, you can manage simple threads.

The id of a post and of a reply should be auto_increment. The parent_id in the second table gets the ID of the first table when a reply is posted.

That way, you can get a whole thread by issuing a query like \"SELECT P., R. FROM posts AS P, replies AS R WHERE P.id=R.parent_id\"

Did that answer your question ?

Steven

Anon

Thanks for your suggestion.I did it the same way you have mentioned.At present the forum display looks like this.

question1
reply1
reply2
reply3
question2
...
In this i want the display like the forum.That is reply with the arrow link(is it a image).Could you explain me how to do this?.

Once again thanks for your help.

srini

Anon

ok, I understand the first level of the threats. how about the second level and the reply post to the second level.

In the third level, how do i assign the parent_id, is it same as the first level of threats? or second level?

beside the parent_id, do i need to create other db field like .. child_id or something else?

THanks

Anon

Hi
Do you mean the second level is the answer for the reply.If so i am handling like this.

question1 (id->1,parent_id->1)
reply1(id->2,parent_id->1)
reply2(id->3,parent_id->1)
reply for reply2(id->4,parent_id->3)
question2(id->5,parent_id->5)
......
......and so on.

While displaying i am using a recursive loop.
That is after fetching a row i will check is there any child records exist in the child table.If so i will loop thru still all child records are extracted.I am doing these by having only two tables one for main questions and the detail table for the replies.
I hope this will give you some idea about my process.If you have any better idea than this i will try that.
While displaying the replies i am dynamically allocating empty spaces.Here i want to put the arrow image like in our forum.I don't know how to do that.Any solution to that will be much appreciated.

Thanks

srini

panarch

imho
you really shouldn't need any child_id

1) all replies are merely posts
2) all posts are treated the same
i.e. all have a parent_id (which is
'none' if it is the first of the thread)

as was mentioned before
you can then use sql to retrieve
entire threads

-paul