Ugh! Help!!!

maya28

I couldn't even think of what to name this question, so please bare with my explanation...

I have 2 tables: USERS and EVENTS

The USERS table contains information on individuals, including their name, email, etc.

The EVENTS table contains information on upcoming events including date, time, description, etc.

I want to set up a form/table that let's these two tables interact, but where I get stuck is that both tables need to be updated. The USERS can have multiple EVENTS, and/or the EVENTS can have multiple USERS...but not every event will have the same users, nor will the users have the same events... There are unlimited amounts of both users and events, so I don't understand how to set this up at all.

I don't even think I'm making sense to myself at this point...

Let me try an example:

Say I got a call from someone who wanted a staff of people at a party this saturday. I enter the details into the EVENT table via an online form (got that one done, no problem). Now I want to assign USERS to that EVENT. How would I link those 2?

or say I have a new USER, i enter their details into the USERS table and they want to work at several EVENTS..how do I go about linking them to events, ones that may have 1-20 other people already working them.

I'm so confused and don't even know where to search for a tutorial, or even previous posts on a situation like this. I'm lost...can anyone help me???

-maya

leatherback

Hi,

The trick here is to use a linking table:

You have your events table and your users' table.

The new table would contain:
an ID column, autoinc. number,
A colum holding the event number
a colum holding the user number

Now you can for every user insert a link to an event.

BuzzLY

Maya, what you are talking about is a many - many relationship, and it's very common to link two tables as LB said. The important thing to remember here is that each entry in the linking table needs to be unique -- in other words, you would never have user Jane Smith linked to the same wedding more than once. I prefer to make the two columns (user_id & event_id) the primary key, and not use an ID column -- but that's my preference. Others like to have that extra ID column.

If you need help with relational databases, I recommend doing a Google search for 'relational databases'. There's a lot of good information out there. You can also check out our book, if you like -- there is a chapter on building databases. Click on the link in my sig.

Good Luck!

maya28

Thank you so much for the advice! I've already begun my research. If you know of a good tutorial that will walk me right through making a relational db, let me know, otherwise I'm just going to continue on this track.

THANK YOU SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH!!!!

BuzzLY

It's difficult to point you to a specific database tutorial, because every user responds differently to various tutorials. However, at the risk of sounding smug, my recommendation to you is to simply do a Google search for what you want. For example, if you search on Google for 'relational databases tutorial', you should get a pretty good list of pages with decent tutorials.

The Beginning PHP5, Apache, MySQL Web Development book that I and several other people here wrote has a chapter on databases that should help you out. In fact, I'm the one that wrote that chapter, so if you need help understanding anything in there, I'd be happy to help.

However, I think you're on the right track. Database design isn't too difficult, and can be rewarding if you take the time to do it right. Good Luck, and have fun! 🙂