PHP Article Version Control

[Vortex566]

Okay the problem is as follows. I need to implement article versioning on a site I am building. I need the latest article to also be the one shown on the main page but I also need to be able to view all the old versions of an article.

I have started by always inserting articles into the articles table and never updating them. I have also so made it so the first time I insert a new article the version_id of that article becomes equal to the article_id.

I am a bit stuck on what to do now mind. I do understand that every time an insert is done on an existing article I need to make sure that the version_id becomes equal to one.

I am open to any ideas.

[bradgrafelman]

Why not reverse it, make the first version be version #1 and the subsequent increment the last version number by one? That makes the most sense to me.

[Weedpacket]

What I did was maintain the document ID as distinct from the version number (which started at 1, as in bradgrafelman's suggestion, and increased by 1 each time a new version was saved - the only alternative to that scheme that I considered was using timestamps, but decided they were better logged separately). The primary key for the table spanned both columns, and I provided a view that listed only the most recent version for all document IDs. That view hid the versioning from everyone who were only interested in "the document" without regard for a specific version. It had triggers attached so that if, e.g., the document was edited the UPDATE on the view would be translated into an INSERT with a bumped version number.