Advanced Read/Unread Post Processing in Forum

Codemaster007

I've searched both PHP Builder and the 'Net in general for about a week now for the answer to this question, but I can't find it, so I feel justified in asking here.

I'm creating my own forum from scratch using PHP and MySQL. I've thought and thought about how to mark read/unread posts, but the only thing I can find on the 'Net is "select all posts where the latest activity is greater than when the user was last active."

Well, what if the user logged out without reading all the posts in the forum? Both phpBB2 and Invision PowerBoard, the two forums I've downloaded and tested, "mark" them all as read once you logout--or so is my experience, although everyone tells me it saves over their sessions. I'm not so sure.

There are only two other options I can think of, neither of which I like. The first, and messiest, is to keep a list of unread topics of each user, and each time a post is made, go through every user's entry and add that post as read. Not pretty.

The other is to keep a list of the highest read post in any active topic in a table, with another entry for every user/topic combo. This is a little better, but I have a gut instinct that there is an easier way. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. Thanks.

ScubaKing22

Use the little last activity deal. Whenever a user visits a page, update the database to reflect the current time. When displaying the list of posts/threads/forums, simply place some sort of icon or text saying whether or not it's "new" compared to the user's last activity. As an example: Say a user visits a page at 100. Say another user posts at 101. This post would then be new because it was made after the user's last recorded activity. If that users would have posted at 99, then it would be old because it was made before the user's latest activity. The basic idea is to compare the post times with the user's last activity, and you should be able to go from there. Hope this helps 😉

Codemaster007

The other is to keep a list of the highest read post in any active topic in a table, with another entry [row] for every user/topic combo.

I think you're talking about this. Like I said, I'm afraid I will have to resort to this, but that could cause me to end up with a rather large database once a fairly large userbase exists.

I'd rather find another way, but if I get no good ideas, I will go with this one. Thanks. If anyone else could help, please do.

mojodojo

why don't you make a table in the database that has 2 fields. One for username, and the other for the thread number. When a thread is clicked on you could update the database to say user x read thread y. So when you list all of the threads, you could query the database to see if each thread was read by user x. Personally I wouldn't query every time you looped through a thread. I would load all of the thread numbers into an array, then when your code loops to display the threads, it would check to see if each thread number is in the array. It's just quicker that's all.

Codemaster007

Thanks, that's a good idea. That's probably what I'll end up doing, in the long run. The only thing you lose with that method is which posts are new, i.e., jumping right to new posts.

Either way, I'm going to have to compromise. I'll leave the topic open for a little while longer to see if anyone has an epiphany or something.

ScubaKing22

All you'd need for "my" idea is 2 fields. One for the post time then one for the user's last activity. Then you'd do a select statement such as "SELECT*FROM post_table WHERE user_last_activity <= post_time". I don't understand why that would result in such a large database.