CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phparrays
Lelio Faieta
Lelio Faieta

Reputation: 6673

store an array in db

I have a page with 24 different buttons.

When the user logs in I have to check if he has the right to click the button and activate that specific functionality. So what I thought is to store an array with 24 items made this way:

[0]=>'yes',
[1]=>'no

and so on for all the buttons.

When I retrieve this array from the db at login I store it in $_SESSION array and then for each button I can do

if($_SESSION['right'][0]=='yes'){
    //show the button
}else{
    //hide the button
}

The array will be stored in a table where there will be all the different user profiles (so each array will exist only once) and each user will have a join to the profile id.

What will be the best way to store the array in the db? Or I miss a better way to achieve my goal?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 62

Answers (4)

claustrofob
claustrofob

Reputation: 4984

Take a look at bitmask approach

You can store up to 32 or 64 (on 64 bit systems) values in a single integer.

Each of your buttons would have a number 2^n where n is the button index. The resulting number is the sum of all active button numbers.

Upvotes: 1

DanMan
DanMan

Reputation: 11561

Don't store your data like that in a DB. That goes against the purpose of a DB.

Create a table for permissions with the user id as foreign key, and then add a INT(1) UNSIGNED column for each permission. Zero means no, one means yes.

Upvotes: 0

Viktor
Viktor

Reputation: 51

I saw the same way in some CMS like Wordpress and OpenCart.

Array stored as serialized string. So, you can use serialize($array_value) to insert, and $array_value = unserialize($row['field1']) to select.

Upvotes: 0

Sudhir Bastakoti
Sudhir Bastakoti

Reputation: 100175

you can serialize() your array and insert it in a varchar field in mysql, and later when you need it, fetch it from db and unserialize() it. But much better way would be to make your tables relational.

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions