Howto extract rows from "text" type? Help Pls!

[scottrohe]

Ok so ive been tryin to figure it out all night and i cant. Im trying to extract from a "Text" value box in mysql, but when it comes out it comes like.. blah, blah2, blah3.. or however i enter it into the box. i want it to come out so i can make each blah have an href.. is it possible or what would i do to do something like it? the purpose for it is for a "favorites" system, where the user clicks add to favorites, it simply adds the products ID to the text box "favorites" in mysql..hopefuly i explained clearly enough. ive tried stuff like;

   function displayFavorites(){
      $q = "SELECT * FROM ".TBL_USERS." ORDER BY favorites";
      $result = mysql_query($q);
      while($rows=mysql_fetch_array($result))
      {
      $this->display_favorites = $rows['favorites'].", ";
      }

and anything else i could think of.. lol. help please!

[raf]

welcome here!

if i understand it correctly, then you want to turn a comma-seperated string into links?

something like

PHP Code:

$arr_favorites = explode (',', $rows['favorites']);
foreach($arr_favorites as $favorite){
   echo '<a href="'. $favorite .'" title="link to favorite">blabla</a>';
} 


well, you don't say what should be the urls and message, but is suppose you get the idea...

from a dba point of view, using composit values like your comma-separated sting for the favorites, is of course a verry bad practice.
i personally would just create a nuw record for each favorite...

[scottrohe]

by a new record, do you mean.. a new database, then add each user to that new database upon registration and have it create x amount of favorites for the amount they have?

[raf]

Originally Posted by scottrohe

by a new record, do you mean.. a new database,

no. a record is just a line (a row) in a database-table.
you'd normally have a table with your users in (1 row for each user) and then you'd have a table with your favorites in (1 row for each favorite-user combination.) like

usertable:
userID | user_name | user_pwd | ...

favorites:
favoritID | userID | fav_url | ...

[scottrohe]

ah yes, that would indeed be better. if users have a ton of favorites and they are all listed 1 favorite/row and there is a ton of rows, is it still effecient?
thanks again.

[raf]

Originally Posted by scottrohe

ah yes, that would indeed be better. if users have a ton of favorites and they are all listed 1 favorite/row and there is a ton of rows, is it still effecient?
thanks again.

if you create indexes on the userID columns + if you keep your columntypes as small as possble, then you shouldn't notice any performance-issues until you have around 2°° records. i don' think you'll ever reach that number, and even then, id would just be a matter of a second to get the records from the table.