[RESOLVED] news feeds

nuttynibbles

hi, i would like to do a news feeds. similar to friendster/facebook, we display to the user that his/her friend has updated their profile, added new friends, etc etc.. how should i go about doing this.. logged them in the database?? any suggestions?

nuttynibbles

i was thinking of logging everything event into the database.. but im afraid it will eat up the alot of server size over a long time

bpat1434

You could just store the "last updated" timestamps in the database, and store with the users the last action time they had (like every link updates a column "last_action" with the current timestamp). Then on page refresh or navigation, you check to see what items are updated since the user's last_action timestamp. So for events, you'd query the events table looking for those events that are from friends, that have been updated after the users "last_action" timestamp.

So you'd kinda do that for each table you want to watch (events, wall writings, mood changes, etc). It's fairly simplistic.

nuttynibbles

hmm tks.. i give it a shot n get back to you =)

nuttynibbles

hi bpat1434, i was thinking through about ur suggestions on creating a timestamp for each table. the idea is good but what if i edit my profile on (12 june 2008 1pm) and edit again today (18 june 2008 8pm). then the latest feeds will only show my profile updated on 18 june 2008 as it will overwrite 12 june 2008.. hmmm..

bpat1434

No, the users table would have a "last login" field which would store the timestamp of the last action of the user (link clicked, form posted, etc.). So while your profile may update the "last updated" field, the last login field would remain, so your feed wouldn't change. Use the last login field to compare with the last_updated fields.

nuttynibbles

hmm.. my user table will contain information like email,password,about me, my fav place etc etc.. so profile table is actually user table for me. im not sure if i get what you meant.. correct me if necessary..tks

nuttynibbles

hey bpat1434, this is what i've did so far.. i collected all the last updated datetime from the tables, put them into an associative array. I tried sorting them out but there seems to be some problem.

this is what i got from the array:

type=>id=>date=>time
comments=>22=>04 Jun 2008=>10:06 AM
comments=>24=>04 Jun 2008=>3:06 PM
comments=>21=>04 Jun 2008=>8:06 AM
comments=>20=>04 Jun 2008=>12:06 AM
comments=>18=>04 Jun 2008=>12:06 AM
comments=>19=>04 Jun 2008=>12:06 AM
comments=>26=>08 Jun 2008=>1:06 AM
comments=>28=>15 Jun 2008=>8:06 PM
comments=>7=>22 May 2008=>12:00 AM
profile=>1=>23 Jun 2008=>9:41 PM
comments=>17=>27 May 2008=>10:05 PM

i used this function i found online for the sort but it couldnt give a 100% result:

function compare_datetme($a, $b) { $retval = strnatcmp($a['date'], $b['date']); if(!$retval) return strnatcmp($a['date'], $b['date']); return $retval; }

Is there any better way?😕

bpat1434

Yeah... you could grab the unixtimestamps of the dates instead, and then just use [man]sort/man to sort the array:

$query = "SELECT *, UNIX_TIMESTAMP(`date`) AS `timestamp` FROM `table` ORDER BY `timestamp` DESC";

$result = mysql_query($query) or die(mysql_error());

$entries = array();

while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result))
{
    $entries[$row['timestamp']] = $row;
}

// Now, sort by timestamp from Earliest to Latest
ksort($entries);
print_r($entries);

// Now sort by timestamp from Latest to Earliest
krsort($entries);
print_r($entries);

That's a very very basic example, and without having a demo table, demo data, and query you're running, it's difficult to give a more exact answer.

nuttynibbles

hi bpat1434, i managed to solve it. i did as u suggested with array and ksort. thank you so much ..=)