Friend Network

treeleaf20

Does anyone have any idea on how to manage a network where people can search users in the database and add them as a friend. I have an idea on how to search for other users but then to save them as friends in the db I have no clue how to even start. Can anyone give me a suggestion on how to start or show me anywhere that I might find some useful information at?? Thanks for your help in advance.

Roger_Ramjet

You need another table to store the paid of IDs

tblUsers
id
name
etc

tblFriends
id1
id2

To find all my friends you would then query

$sql = "SELECT * FROM tblUsers INNER JOIN tblFriends 
              ON tblUsers.id=tblFriends.id2 WHERE tblFriends.id1=$myid";

To find all the people who list me as a friend you query

$sql = "SELECT * FROM tblUsers INNER JOIN tblFriends 
            ON tblUsers.id=tblFriends.id1 WHERE tblFriends.id2=$myid";

You can then do a UNION query to get the 2 lists in one go

If your version does not support UNION queries then you join tblUsers to tblFriends TWICE using an alias if you want to do it in 1 query

$sql = "SELECT * FROM tblUsers, tblFriends AS t1, tblFriends AS t2 
            WHERE (tblUsers.id=t1.id1 AND t1.id2=$myid) 
            OR (tblUsers.id=t2.id2 AND t2.id1=$myid)";

LoganK

Roger - why do you prefix your tables with "tbl"? Unless you happen to be working with SQL server, in which there's more than just a table object in a database...

Roger_Ramjet

It's called 'Hungarian Notation' and is a VB and VBA habit of mine, since that's what I've done for 6-7 years now.

The prefix does just what you say, diferentiates between object, or variable, types. So a string var would be named strVar, a long integer would be lngVar, etc. Just helps to remind one when using them, exactly what data type the variable is. This also helps with tblClient, clsClient, frmClient, oClient, etc.

LoganK

Allright, I get it now...yes, I know it from VB because I work with it a lot too...thanks for letting me understand!

🙂

treeleaf20

Ok I have a two tables one is called users and the other table is called friends. I am trying to select the FName of a friend. When I add a new friend to the friend table the field names are user_id, friend_id and user_name. The user_id is the id of person getting the friend, the friend_id is the person that is being added as the friend and the user_name is the user_name of the person getting the friend (user_id and user_name are pretty much the same thing).

I want the query to select the FName of the friend from the users table. The friend_id corresponds to a user_id from the users tables.

I would want the query to be something like this:

$query = "SELECT FName from users, friends WHERE friends.friend_id=users.user_id AND WHERE friends.user_name = '$_SESSION[Username]' ";

I think I would almost have to do this in two queries, one query to select the friend_id and then run the $query. The query I would use to select the friend_ids is:

$queryfriend = "SELECT friend_id from friends Where user_name = '$_SESSION[Username]'";

How would I integrate those two queries together to get my desired result???

So in english the query is trying to say Select the first name of the friend who's id equals the id that was assigned when the user registered and only list the user's friends who has the username which is trying to view all their friends.

I'm using MySQL and I can't get this query to work. Please help?? I tried your suggestion earlier and it wouldn't work.

treeleaf20

Also to display the results I would like it so that the link would contain the friend_id but the actual text would be the FName.

I have the following code which only displays the friend_id as the link and the text.

$queryfriend = "SELECT friend_id from friends Where user_name = '$_SESSION[Username]'";
$result = mysql_query($queryfriend) or die("Select Failed!");

if (mysql_num_rows($result) > 0) {	
for ($j = 0; $j<mysql_num_rows($result); $j++) {	   		
echo "<tr>\n";
for ($k = 0; $k<mysql_num_fields($result); $k++) {

echo "<td align=center><a href=\"viewprofile.php?id=" . mysql_result($result,$j,$k) . "\">" . mysql_result($result,$j, $k) . "</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;\n";
} 
}
echo "</tr>\n\n";
}

Thanks for the help again.

treeleaf20

Just and update, I tried to continue to work through this and I couldn't get it yet...cano someone please help.

Thanks