Posted by Daz on 10/24/06 00:37

Hello all,

my question is more regarding advice on a script design. I have about
3600 entries in my database, the user submits a list, which is then
checked against those in the database to confirm whether or not they
already own a particular item. If they do, then it's not added to the
user table, whereas if it is, then it _is_ added to the user table.
However, if the item is not in the database, the user is advised of
this. So basically, I need to figure out a quick way to compare the
users submited items (probably 50 to 700 items), with those in an array
that I have created using the items from the database.

I can think of two ways to achieve this. Firstly, I can iterate through
all of the users items, and use in_array() to see if they are in the
database array of items. I think another method I can use, is very
similar, but rather than have an array of database items, I can put
them all into a single comma seperated string, and iterate through the
array of user items, using regex to check if the item is in the
database. There may be another more efficient way to acheive the
results I am looking for, but I can't think of anything else.

I would appreciate it if anyone could tell me which of the 2 is likely
to be faster, or even if there is an even better way altogether. I need
to find the quickest way, as I don't want to over work the server or
for the processing to cause a server timeout.

All the best.

Daz.

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