Lists/Database (Favourite System) help

[Mutley]

I'm wanting to make a "favourite" system for my site for articles, so members can add the article to their accounts favourites by clicking a button.

I'm unsure what is the easiest way to do this. I'm thinking if I have 2 fields in the database (username and favourites) then in the favourites field have a list of all the favourites so (article1, article8, article11, article12) etc by the username fields side.

Just, how do I explode the list into individual words if I want to list them like:
article1
article8
article11
article12

in a table? Do I use an array function of some sort?

And finally, how do I insert data into the field with out overwriting what is currently their? So If I add "article20" it adds it to the end of the list in the field?

Is this a good way to do it?

Thanks. :)

[trq]

Create a table with user ids (or names) and a field fav. Then just add a new record for each favourite. To get all user 4's favourites run...

[code]
SELECT fav FROM favourites WHERE userid = 4;
[/code]

[Eddyon]

well you could just use something like preg_replace() to replace commars with </tr><tr> to create a new row in a table.

also when adding a new one just create a new variable and add ",$newfavourite" onto the old variable.

But a better way I would think to do it was to add a table with the columns username and article and just get it to list all results matching that username. That way you can just put a new entry in the table every time they add a new one?

[Mutley]

[quote author=thorpe link=topic=122012.msg502586#msg502586 date=1168552821]
Create a table with user ids (or names) and a field fav. Then just add a new record for each favourite. To get all user 4's favourites run...

[code]
SELECT fav FROM favourites WHERE userid = 4;
[/code]
[/quote]

How does this differ from viewing or adding any information to the database?

So how do I POST a new favourite, is it simply an INSERT INTO ? How do I insert it into the same field?

[Eddyon]

Yep, just insert the username and the favourite as a new record.

[Eddyon]

And if you do something like:

[code]while($row=mysql_fetch_array($query)){

$favourite = $row['favourite'];

echo "$favourite <br>";

}[/code]

It should list all of the records for that user. Just use that as an example and build from it to suit your needs.