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douceur

Hi. I'm trying to make a system that keeps track of messages between users. I'm planning to have a messages table and a users table, but I'm running into a problem: I'm not sure how to keep track of which messages are new for a specific user. One user may have read a message, while another has not. I would like to be able to tell the latter user, when he logs in, that he has X new messages. What would be the best way to keep track of information like this?

Thanks.

leatherback

Hi,

Do all messages go to all users? Or do all messages have just one recipient? In the first case I suppose you would have to have a list of message_nr | Recipient_Nr | Status where you keep track for each message wether it has been read. Or you could even remove the status col, and only have messages there which have not been read. Once a use read a message, the entry is removed from the table.

In the second case you can add a colum to the messages table, with status, which can be 1 or 0, for read / unread.

douceur

The messages go to everyone, so the first case is correct. I believe I understand your idea. Correct me if I'm wrong, but basically create a table that, when a new message is added, has a row for that message and each user, thus having a number of rows (for that message) equal to each user? And then deleting that row when the corresponding user reads the message?

Thanks for the help, and please correct me if I'm wrong. 🙂

leatherback

Hi,

Yeah, that was the first thing that came to my mind. Not sure wether there are easier ways. Probably there will be somebody with a more elegant idea
(This get ugly when you have hundred of users with mutliple post per day.. But usually you don't, so this should work 😃 )