How to make a friendster?

mheitzenroder

I'm trying to create a freindster-type clone and I am having a hard time trying figure out how to design the code.

So when someone adds a user's ID to their profile, they become a 1st Degree connection.

How should I show second and third degree connections?

How should the database be designed?

Cheers to those who can help me.

thorpe

looks some sort of tree type of relationship. a basic setup would be something like.

id int (autoincriment)
parent_id int
username varchar(20)

then, a root user (someone who joins alone?) has a parent_id of 0. then if a root user invited me to join, i would inherit a parent_id to the value of there id. then if i invite someone, they inherit my id as there parent_id. this way everyone is related.... well all the way back to the root user, and it can continue allong like this forever.

you could even extend this pretty easily to incorperate groups... but anyway.

hope this is clear, and maybe even close to what your after.

mheitzenroder

Originally posted by thorpe

looks some sort of tree type of relationship. a basic setup would be something like.

id int (autoincriment)
parent_id int
username varchar(20)

then, a root user (someone who joins alone?) has a parent_id of 0. then if a root user invited me to join, i would inherit a parent_id to the value of there id. then if i invite someone, they inherit my id as there parent_id. this way everyone is related.... well all the way back to the root user, and it can continue allong like this forever.

you could even extend this pretty easily to incorperate groups... but anyway.

hope this is clear, and maybe even close to what your after.

Not quite what I am after because I need the users of the sites to say which profiles of which they are friends of, not just related. That's cool for a tree structure, but not really a "Friend Of" type stucture.

mheitzenroder

Users add other user's ID's to their profile. This becomes their 1st degree network

1st Degree = UID's

2nd Degree Network = 1st Degree's 1st Degree UIDs

3rd Degree Network = 1st Degree's 2nd Degree UIDs and 2nd Degree's 1st Degree UIDs

However, all I have to do is store in the databases each user's first degree network. I guess my question is more about "how do I design the database?"

I think I can write the queries and what not to do it, but it's the DB design that has me confused

tekky

what thorpe suggested is what you want... then just.... only catch is you wont be able to do a single query....

add a FRIENDS table...

user_id, friend_id

then SELECT from friends WHERE user_id=$id

and loop through for how many tiers you want each time changing $id = friend_id of each row.... yah this is gonna be a ton of queries.... but its hte only way I can think of...

mheitzenroder

I got it... great

THanks everyone!