[SOLVED] recent activity table

[jonniejoejonson]

A site like facebook allows users to view their recent activity.

Do they have a table called recentActivity? or do they simply join all the tables together and get the 10 most recent activities for this user from this joined table?

thanks to any responders J.

[JonnoTheDev]

They could do either but the latter seems the most feasible.

Only the facebook developers could tell you this.

[jonniejoejonson]

So if you were designing a recent activities, you would do it by joining all tables together and then getting that users most recent activities?.. thanks for the response by the way.

[xtopolis]

Facebook is huge.  Their databases are mirrored, and so the "most recent activity" is not always the most recent.

 

To say you should JOIN all your tables really depends on your structure.  Do you have multiple tables that have their own events?  Or do you have one common table where events are published?

 

If you had the first design, then you would probably have to do something like what was said above.. but if you had the latter, you would only select the 10 most recent events..

 

So, it depends on your design.

[jonniejoejonson]

i have for example an images table. a videos table. a friends table etc...

each table has a user_id and a date fields.

therefore i could just inner join all the tables along userId and then select the 10 most recent activities for a user.

However facebook have the option to delete any recent activities, therefore this would require all my tables have a field that states whetehr a user has choosen to delete this from there recentacitivites.

therefore i would assume that facebook would have an entire table dedicated to recent activities.. i may well be wrong.. what do you think?... thanks J.

[fenway]

Don't model anything facebook does for your site, or vice versa.  It doesn't apply.

[jonniejoejonson]

thanks for your response, but i am self taught and was wandering how to go about something... was just using facebook as an example because it is doing the same thing that im trying to do. so would you use a seperate table? or simply join all the tables?... thanks J

[fenway]

You could simply update a recent activities table, I suppose.

[jonniejoejonson]

thanks for your response... but you dont sound convinced... like i said i am self taught so i am simply guessing as to what would be best... if you were trying to create a recents activity would you create a seperate table for it? thanks... J

[JonnoTheDev]

if you were trying to create a recents activity would you create a seperate table for it

 

yes

[jonniejoejonson]

thanks neil.