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    • 4673
    • 577 Posts
    I have had this idea that is floating around in my head for at least close to 2 years now, although, it started to brew while working with a different code base I thought that it could also apply here.

    My idea is to have a dynamic db column ability. I’ll use the user data as an example.

    I would say that most sites need at the bare minimum (for sites that use registration): user name, password, email address
    Any other information I think is technically secondary.

    So, I was wondering how could you make it so that the site owner could add/delete any other data that they don’t feel is necessary. Now, I’m not talking about turning on/off but rather more as in adding/deleting columns from a table.

    So, for example the site owner could add in; location, pim, favorite fast food, favorite gas station, ummm ex-boy/girl friends phone number (don’t ask me why -- these are just examples). with the current system and pretty much every system I’ve seen so far outside of a flat-file perl program force you into what the original prgrammer decided you to live with.

    I’ve seen a solution that let’s you psuedo like wise do this by using a catch all column that is defined in another column but if that column get’s wiped out you loose everything! It’s a great work around but not the holy grail. So, I’ve been bating my head around ideas that could use a skinny phpmyadmin that least the site owner to add in their own columns (security on this is really sketchy) and then use a wildcard "*" inplace of every column name that is hard coded (server hit would seem to be heavy) or use snippets/chunks to populate strings that would change depending on what columns that you have "hopefully" improving server performance.

    Does anybody have any ideas?
      Tangent-Warrior smiley
      • 33496
      • 19 Posts
      A solution could be (but probably not the best) to just have a key,value kind of system.

       --------------------------------------------
      | username |  property |  value        |
       --------------------------------------------
      | alvin    |  password | 123345        |
      | alvin    |  name     | Alvin Moo     |
      | alvin    | phone     | +460999       |
      | zeth     | password  | 5432321       |
      | zeth     | name      | Johnny        |
       --------------------------------------------

      This would make the table "dynamic" as you can add all properties you want in the properties column.
        Johnny Chadda
        http://johnny.chadda.se
        "This is a UNIX virus. Please remove all your files and copy this message to friends."
        • 4673
        • 577 Posts
        hmmm, that is a good idea. I’ve just had a long day, so will need to sleep on it so to say.

        thanks!!

          Tangent-Warrior smiley