[RESOLVED] Making a Friend System

[Ascendancy]

I have already created a script that allows users to join the site, and they can update their profile information and edit a photo of them self. However, I am stumped as to what to do about a friend system. I am thinking that I need a whole new table called "friends", but then I am not sure what to do about the different columns and such. Hopefully somebody can help me with this.

[TheDefender]

It would seem like you could probably create a table that utilizes foreign keys to make the identification...

Friend_ID | Friend1_ID | Friend2_ID | Accepted

Where Friend_ID is the table's primary key, the Friend1_ID is the FK that references the ID of the person making the friend request, Friend2_ID is the friend with whom the request is made, and Accepted is an enum y|n column to indicate the friendship was accepted. (This should be a start for you anyhow)

[Ascendancy]

Yup, that is a pretty good start actually. I can't believe I didn't think of that! Thanks for the help.

[TheDefender]

Your queries could be something along the lines of:

SELLECT * FROM FriendTable WHERE (Friend1_ID = 'user_id' AND Accepted = 'y') OR (Friend2_ID = 'user_id' AND Accepted = 'y')

That would cover the user's own friend list as well as any friends they've accepted requests from. (This setup assumes a friend accept automatically creates a two way friendship)

You can get more detailed in the structure, depending on how much of what you want to cover, but in it's simplist form, this is how I'd go about doing it.