multiple word table name

weazy

i am trying to create tables on the fly based on user input. I have run into a situation where the answer a user could give would be 2 or 3 words. what is the best way to handle this?

i tried putting the table name in quotes, but that didnt work.

thanks

ScubaKing22

If you had the user input stored in a variable $var, you could do the following:

$query="CREATE TABLE ".$var." (values VALUE(value))";

weazy

yeah, that is my first approach:

$ct_query = "CREATE TABLE " . $newtopic . " ( id INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, PRIMARY KEY(id), username VARCHAR(50), instid TINYINT(2), groupid TINYINT(2))");
$cq = mysql_query($ct_query);

this does not work though when its a two or more word table name.

ruski

How about replacing the spaces with underbars, such as

$newtopic = str_replace(' ','_',$newtopic)

my topic becomes my_topic

ruski

Another possibility:

If your topics always have the same data layout, you could create 1 master table which contains a topic column (such as topic varchar(64) ) and not worry about creating separate tables for each topic. Use 1 table, and select whatever WHERE topic='$theTopic'. The topic field can have blank spaces in it.

ruski

weazy

i will try your first suggestin, the second wouldnt give me enough flexibility in storing data.

also might try adding a column named $newtopic in a copics table ....

weazy

on second thought, i need it to be a table that corresponds to the topic id, the column thing wouldnt work after all.