mulitple messages

[grail]

Hey guys,

Ive got a database driven "instant message" system going, however Im having problems with getting multiple recipiants to work. Most of the message systems Ive seen use a ; between the recipiants. What is the trick to getting the database to recognize several different names containted in the recipiant column of the database? Has anyone delt with this before and know the trick?

Thanks fellas.

PS. Id also like to have an all inclusive recipiant. For example if you send a message to "All", everyone will be able to get it. Ive tried:

<b>select * from message where reciever='$valid_user' or reciever = all</b>

However this does not seem to work, as it gives an error in the result.

[[deleted]]

Putting a ; between the recipiants. is probably the simplest solution.

In a perfect world you'd probably normalize that and put all the recipiants in a 'recipiants' table, but that's probably more work than it is worth.

Just put the recpts in a ; delimited string, and use explode or something to get them back.

[grail]

I didnt mention this before and you may have already assumed this. The message information is entered into the db by form. What would be a generic example of the delimited string you suggested? When the recipiants are inserted into the db do they look like (Mike;John;Sam)? The reason Im asking is, I made a prior attempt at inserting the names into the database with a ; between them and could only get the first name in the list to be recognized.

[[deleted]]

"them and could only get the first name in the list to be recognized"

What do you mean by 'recognized'?

A delimited string is not read as seperate datas by the database, the db just sees one big string. YOU will have to use explode() or something to transform the string into an array of values that you can loop through to get each name/id (I'd use IDs rather than names)