Bookmark system

[aj3220]

What i have written so far is another table. I grab the id of the user from the users table and tie the two tables together by the id.

Should i keep doing it that way or should i use the users name to sort what bookmarks are theirs?

Thanks
Anthony

[Weedpacket]

Awfully vague, but if you're asking if you should have the user's name in the bookmarks table instead of their ID from the user's table, then the short answer is No.

[matto]

hi,

this is all about relational database modeling (there are lots of articles and tutorials on this on the web, try google if you are interested).

usually is is recommendable to use a unique id (as you have for your users, it's the "primary key" of your user table) to relate one table's entries to another table's (= your bookmark table).

Why? Because (usually, or maybe in the future) usernames can change while they'll always keep their ID numbers. If you used usernames as "foreign keys" in your bookmark table,

• you'd have to change them all in case someone changes his username
• they would have to be unique (no two john_does would be possible without major confusion in the database)
• they would unnecessarily take more disk space.

Hope this is what you wanted to know.

[aj3220]

yes, thank you both that is exactly what i needed

• Anthony