dating website database may quickly get out of hand, as well as list generator

[moose-en-a-gant]

Part I control statement list generator

 

I think this could be simplified with a permuation but

 

first, this problem of creating a list based on certain conditions,

 

This is the rough structure of my list generator:

First I have a table with people in it; stores a person's id, gender, orientation, interested partner, age

 

The orientation is uncertain because in some cases it seems redundant like a transgender person declaring a gender 

 

Anyway, so given the five pieces of information

 

I create an "alogrithm?" or control statement list generator based on user id's like this:

 

Start with gender then orientation then age

The age part is concerning, I have a character fix of 2, eg. 10 to 99

 

I am doing in ten years like 10 to 20, 20 to 30, etc... but using a <= operator

 

So

 

person A looking for person B

 

Person A is a male, straight, age<=20

 

One branch of the control statement is about 30 lines or less which doesn't seem bad, but that's 3 x 6 x 3 x 30 = ~ 170 lines of code which doesn't seem bad. I'm also concerned about using switch instead of a try-all-till-found sort of control system 

 

 

The multiplication mambo jambo over there is from the three specifications of a person:

 

gender: male,female,both

 

orientation: straight, lesbian, gay, bi, don't care to say, other

 

date sought: male, female, both

 

I realize too that this can be much better

 

Already my form is ugly, there are 7 lines to be filled including username, email, password.

 

Part II who has viewed who

 

This is a matter of what works best or are they the same.

 

I want the experience to be this: once you've passed a person eg. declared you weren't interested in him / her, you don't see them again, unless you want to.

 

I'm not sure yet how I will generate a list, I know already that it won't be images, but numbers eg. text only, but how do you have a current list eg. when new members sign up after you have generated a list? This is more related above but... 

 

The thought is to create a separate table with at least three columns: id, user, user id viewed

 

Can it be better than that?

The problem here is that say 16 people exist on the website, then for each person to look at the other person, what is that 16 x 15  = 240 columns? Just from 16 people?

Can it be better?

 

Thanks for any suggestions

 

[elemen121]

Part 1) I'm not sure what you mean by a "control statement list generator".  To query the database you would just put the parameters that a user is searching on in SQL Query.

 

Part 2) A table with 3 columns expanding to "what is that 16 x 15  = 240 columns?" It might be 240 rows of data, I don't think it will get out of hand with a few hundred rows of data.