Watchlist.php

highexodus

'm fairly new to php but I have relatively easy time picking up new skills with it.

I'm currently trying to figure out how to add a "watchlist" to a community script. The watchlist would allow members to enter keywords for products or services and when another member posts an item with matching keywords in the product title it would send the watching member an email.

(correct me if I'm wrong) the way I would approach it is to add a new field in my members table called "watchlist" where the member would add a list of keywords (strings).

When a new item is posted a query would run and match any strings in the title to any keywords in the existing members "watchlist" field.
If a match is found a link to the posted item would be sent to the watching member, and the link would be saved to a section of their profile called "items of interest".

That is the structure of what I'm trying to accomplish, so now I need help figuring out the code to make it happen!

HELP PLEEEEEAAAASE! 🙂

jeremyphphaven

your thinking only covers the scenario where FIRST a person created a watchlist FOLLOWED UP BY someone adding a product to match the watchlist.

I'm assuming when someone creates a watchlist you'll want to also search to things that match.

There is also a couple other things/scenarios that may not be covered... what about this?

First, if someone creates a watchlist/wishlist you first go out and search for items on that list and notifies them if it finds any

IF none apply the Second part to the equation is you have a Cron Job that runs every night at a time when no one is on your site that queries for products matching a wish list and sends out an notification accordingly.

That's a very high level of how I would approach it without knowing more about your specific situation.

highexodus

Yes Jeremy,

It would be nice if the script also checks current keywords to see if they exist, but that is not necessary for this basic script because my social network has a very advanced search engine.
The watchlist is meant to provide a way of finding items not yet posted to my site (hence the need for a list that will notify users looking for items)

Ideally the check would be performed on the keywords for every new item posted as well as a cron that runs a check every night.

Now all I need to do is to figure out the code to get a basic script setup with a mysql database.