field type help

[Destramic]

k i have a field in my table but i want to know what type to set my news status as:
have a field called "status" for my news

either it should be a field that contains the value true or false ie. 0 or 1

or on the other hand i could have the value "Active" or "Inactive"

what field type would be the best for this and what would be the best way?

thanks..how comeone can help me on my query

[fenway]

I would say to use the ENUM data type -- you can use the words "active" and "inactive", and the DB will encode these as 0 or 1. This way, you can have the best of both worlds; plus, it's more flexible if you ever want to add a 3rd type.

[Destramic]

k thank you..but this is the mysql error im getting

[!--quoteo--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--quotec--]
ALTER TABLE `games` CHANGE `status` `status` ENUM( 1 ) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0'

#1064 - You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '1) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0'' at line 1
[/quote]

[fenway]

You don't explicitly define the integer components:

[code]ALTER TABLE `games` CHANGE `status` `status` ENUM( 'inactive', 'active' ) NOT NULL DEFAULT 'active'[/code]

You can, of course, switch the order of the fields.