Problem figuring out how I should update category name on customer's product page.

[Paul_help_]

Hi Guys. I am building a client a content management system.

He owns a 'bed and mattress' company.

And I am in the process of building him a product page, which will ultimately display info on the products he uploads in the admin area of his site.

Obviously, I need to give my client the option of adding and/or renaming existing product categories (which leads to my question).

The only thing I am having problems with is how I would edit an existing 'category name' without messing up my client's products which already exist in the particular category which has been renamed.

For example, my plan is to create a database named 'Products', and then give my client the ability to create a category name which will also create a table with the same name (which it can correspond to).

But, what if my client wanted to rename a category to something different?

Would I still be able to rename the table which the category links to (updating them both, so they can continue to correspond with one another)?

Paul.

[pbismad]

You would NOT name a table to match a data value. You would name a table for the meaning of the data in the table. Categories would be stored in a category table. Products would be stored in a product data.

You would have a category table, that holds the category names and assigns a category id via an auto-increment integer column. All the products would be in one table. You would store the category id in a category_id column to indicate which category a product belongs to.

To edit a category name or add new categories, you would edit the category name in the category table or add new entries in the category table.

[dalecosp]

pbismad;11064477 wrote:

You would NOT name a table to match a data value. You would name a table for the meaning of the data in the table. Categories would be stored in a category table. Products would be stored in a product data.

You would have a category table, that holds the category names and assigns a category id via an auto-increment integer column. All the products would be in one table. You would store the category id in a category_id column to indicate which category a product belongs to.

To edit a category name or add new categories, you would edit the category name in the category table or add new entries in the category table.

+1. You can look at OMBE.com if you wish. "Copiers" is category 334, "Printers" is 341, etc. In August, the PHB had us change category 665, "National Service Companies", to "Board Repair" ... there were no side effects, because "Board Repair" has a category ID of 665 (and that ID was the ID of "National Service Companies").

The products table doesn't say that a product is "Copiers", "Printers", or "Board Repair" ... the data in the "category" field of the products table has an integer value (334, 341, 665, etc.)

+---------+-----------------------------------------------+----------+
| id      | title                                         | category |
+---------+-----------------------------------------------+----------+
| 1468910 | Konica-Minolta MIN-BIZC353                    |      334 |
|     584 | New+dot+matrix%2C+2+year+warranty             |      341 |
|  256042 | Nation-Wide+Repair+Service%2C+Inc.+%28NWRS%29 |      665 |
+---------+-----------------------------------------------+----------+