[RESOLVED] Create a table with a unique name

mattm591

Hi,

I'm trying to make a script which creates MySQL tables and everytime one is made the name is unique.

I first tried using the time() function to get the current time code in PHP and use that as the name but it seems that won't always be unique.

So then I thought I could create a table and assign it a name using a random number I could generate.

The issue there is that I would still need to check that the number generated had not been used before.

So does anyone know of a way to check if the name I'm about to assign to my table is already taken, or does anyone know of a better way to achieve what I'm trying to achieve.

Thanks,

Matt

laserlight

Why do you want to create tables with randomly unique names? It sounds like you either want the user to specify a prefix for the table names at installation so as to avoid conflict with existing tables, or you have a serious flaw in your database schema design.

mattm591

Each table is going to store a conversation and I can't have the user name each conversation so I want to generate a name for the table automatically but it has to be unique (obviously or mysql returns an error)

laserlight

Each table is going to store a conversation and I can't have the user name each conversation so I want to generate a name for the table automatically but it has to be unique (obviously or mysql returns an error)

A typical solution with relational databases is to have just one table of conversations. However, I am not sure if a relational database is suitable for storing conversations in the first place, but it is possible.

mattm591

yes but that would get confusing especially due to the 255 character limit. Is there no way to do what I asked originally?

laserlight

yes but that would get confusing especially due to the 255 character limit

Use a TEXT field instead of VARCHAR.

Is there no way to do what I asked originally?

You could attempt to create a table, and if it fails, try again. However, the problem I feel is that this is an abuse of a relational database. You may well be better off using text files.

jeremyphphaven

you can also still use time and concatenate a random number to it, but again... laserlight is right. Just make a table with a primary id, user1, user2, and conversation field (very simple form) to store the conversation if you're not that advanced with either php or database design/development

saidbakr

Hi,

To generate something unique with unregistered users, you just need auto_increment integer value. You should try to forget the idea of creating new table for every new converstion as laserlight told you.

As hint try to use phpmyadmin to deal with your database during design state. If there is any difficulties to installing it you may use a package such as XAMPP which will allow you to have Apache, MySQL, PHP, PHPMyadmin and other tools installed with few buttons hits.

mattm591

saidbakr wrote:
Hi,

To generate something unique with unregistered users, you just need auto_increment integer value. You should try to forget the idea of creating new table for every new converstion as laserlight told you.

As hint try to use phpmyadmin to deal with your database during design state. If there is any difficulties to installing it you may use a package such as XAMPP which will allow you to have Apache, MySQL, PHP, PHPMyadmin and other tools installed with few buttons hits.

Thanks, I do use PHPMyAdmin for my database design and had originally thought about using one table but thought it might be an issue with it growing too big.
However as it does sound like making new tables is going to be worse I think I'll go back to that.
Thanks for the help

saidbakr

Don't worry at all about with the growing of the table. Do you know that the ability of DBMS such as MySQL to handle file's size? It is limited with the Operating system which it runs based on it. If you have a chance to look at web application such as this forum, you will see that there is one table to handle all posts.

The issue of getting table big may be regarded in some file based DBMS such as MS Access and in most cases leads to some slowness of performance of your application not halting it at all.