Posted by d on 02/23/06 16:28

"Dale" <dale.drinkard@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1140703564.436036.79490@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
> I'm not sure I'm even thinking about this the right way, but here goes:
>
> I have a table of users. Each one of these users may be associated
> with none, one, or many records in another table I call a todo table.
> table user = 'id', 'name', 'bla bla bla','todo_list'
> table todo = 'id','title','other info'
>
> Suppose user 'id=1253' has on his todo list items 756,241, and 672. I
> create a string 756,241,672 and store that string in the user's
> todo_list field. Then when I want to display the todo items I get the
> string with a query, bust it up into an array, iterate the array and
> query the todo table.
>
> I have a gut feeling I'm making it way more complicated than need be.
> But I can't think of any other way to do it

You're nearly there. Instead of storing a comma-seperated list of IDs, use
a third table, say "chores" or something that fits in with your data. Give
that table 3 columns - an ID, a user ID, and a todo ID. To link a user with
a task, insert their ID and the task's ID into that table. To get the
user's tasks, simply join the chores table with the todo table, and search
for a particular user ID. That's a much more efficient way of storing such
relationships.

Is that cool?

dave

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