creating a table w/ a variable...

AndyLand

I am relatively new to php, and I am creating a site that will require users to register and login. I have all this code working (a friend of mine adapated his). Now I am trying to make it create a table upon successful registration. In register.php I put in that if registration is succesful to create a table for that user. I would like to to be something like tablename_id. Where id is the id number that was just created for them upon registering. It is the id field in the member table. what would be the correct way to do this. It looks like the variable may be set to $id, but I can't figure out how to work it into the code correctly. I am not sure if I am doing it wrong, or because the id isn't being pulled from the member table. Any help would be appreciated, and I can give you more information if this isn't entirely clear. Thanks.

Drakla

What does your table create query look like? You'd just have to create a variable for the name and include that in.

And what does w/ mean?

AndyLand

i changed the w/ to with :-)

mysql_query("CREATE TABLE phonebook_id. (
				contact_id int NOT NULL auto_increment,
				first_name varchar(100) NOT NULL,
				...
				PRIMARY KEY(contact_id)
)")

the ... is all the different fields that are inserted into the table
the table should be named phonebook_id, so it'd be phonebook_1, phonebook_2...
the id was just created at this point, as this code is in my register.php so I am not sure if I am not telling it to insert the id right, or the problem is that it is having trouble pulling the id from the table.
would it be easier for the table to the username instead of the id, as the username is user created (and I know can be pulled up already) instead of the auto-created id?

Drakla

As long as you can easily keep track of it then you can use whatever as the table suffix - and from a visual inspection point of view a username would be helpful, as much as numbers really seem more appropriate in case somebody could delete their account, then somebody else signs up with the same name - but that depends on your system, clearly.

$id = 123;

$query = "CREATE TABLE phonebook_$id (
                contact_id int NOT NULL auto_increment,
                first_name varchar(100) NOT NULL,
                ...
                PRIMARY KEY(contact_id)
)";

It's as easy as that, which makes me wonder if I've underestimated the problem somehow.

And just out of interest, is having separate tables for every user a good solution to your design? I'm presuming you're good with database normalisation and all that.