Display Results like a message board

stonefish

Hello,

I am creating a message board for my website and I want to be able to display the messages (which are stored as rows in a MySQL database) so that it clearly shows if a message is a reply to someone elses message or an original message

example of 5 message (3 original posts and 2 replies)

post 1 - I like cake!
post 2 - Reply to post 1 =>I like cake too!
post 3 - Reply to post 2 which is a reply to post 1 =>What sort of cake??
post 4 - Hows the weather?
post 5 - Can't think of anything else

To distinguish a reply from an original post in my MySQL table i have a column called 'reply' which i fill with the ID number of the post it is reponding to. However this wont tell me if the reffering post is also a reply to another post.

Does anyone know a good scalable way of doing this, and printing it on a screen with each reply indented and displayed under its reffering post??

Houdini

Run a test on whether the post is a reply from your table and format the result with a different font or font color or preceed with the chars re: or change the color with a style. Here is a script to play around with.

<html>
<body>
<form action="display.php" method="post">Choose Font
<input type='radio' value="normal" name="font">Normal
<input type='radio' value="comic" name="font" 
style="font-family;'Comic Sans MS'">
<span style='font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>Comic</span>
<textarea style='font-family:"Comic Sans MS"' rows =20 cols=35 name='test'></textarea>
<input type="submit" value="Post it!">
</form>
</body>
</html>

Then display the results with this.

<?php
if($_POST['font']=='comic'){
echo "<span style='font-family:\"Comic Sans MS\"'>".$_POST['test']."</span>";
}
else
echo $_POST['test'];
?>