approval system

autumn

Hi,

I'm setting up a database management system and I would like to set it up so the user can log in and update the database but I don't want the changes to affect the site straight away. The changes need to be approved by the administrator first.

This is easy to do for simple CMS systems, ie a title and body for a page. I usually create 2 extra fields for each field, one for live, one for pending changes and when the change is approved, I simply copy the values from the secondary field to the first.

BUT...

This system is a bit more complex. There are 2 or 3 separate relational tables eg categories and products. So if the user creates a new category, he needs to be able to see it in order to add new products to it. Does that make sense?

I mean the user should be able to add, edit, delete etc and see the changes but this will only be visable on the live site when approved.

Any ideas? I'm very lost with this one 🙁

thanks,

OhLordy

I have an idea to do with adding two extra columns with the user's ID and a Live tag (either "Y" or "N") and then basically generating the site specific to teh user. I'm not sure if this would work as I don't know the topography of the site. If you could post your database design I would be able to say more
Cheers
Rob

autumn

the database is nothing special:

CREATE TABLE forms_categories (
id int(5) NOT NULL auto_increment,
category varchar(100) default NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (id)
)

CREATE TABLE forms_products (
id int(5) NOT NULL auto_increment,
parent_cat int(3) default NULL,
product varchar(100) default NULL,
price float(10,2) default NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (id)
)