What is the best way to do this?

[marcebra]

Hello,

I have a website where the user has to select a date from a dropdown menu to make an appointment with a consulant. Each consultant has a different schedule and cannot meet everyday.

What i need is way to get all the dates into a database for each consultant. Each consultant has many differnt dates so I don't think making a column in the database for each date is a god idea. I was thinking of perhaps having just one big textbox for the dates and just separating the dates with commas or with a new line. But I'm not sure how that would affect calling on them indivudally. I need to put them into a drop down box to be selected so whatever way that php can call on each date distinctly, works for me.

I would appreciate it if anyone could tell me that best method to store the data and to call upon it in the dropdown box.

Thanks in advance

[barand]

You need to use two tables,

consultant

       consultant_id  |  consultant_name | otherdetails ....

availability

       consultant_id  |  date_available

Date would look like

consultant

1 | James T Kirk
2 | Jean Luc Picard

availability

1 | 2003-06-24
1 | 2003-06-25
1 | 2003-06-27
2 | 2003-06-23
2 | 2003-06-25
2 | 2003-06-26

SELECT date_available FROM availability WHERE consultant_id=2

will give the dates for Jean Luc.

hth