CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpsqldatabaselaraveleloquent
AshMenhennett
AshMenhennett

Reputation: 1095

internal messaging system laravel database design

I am building an internal messaging system for a forum that I have built with Laravel 5.3. Basically, I want to have messaging functionality, similar to Linkedin- User can send an email to another User and vice versa. There is going to be a single thread for a given conversation, which will take place between two users. I have been looking through some questions on StackOverflow, but haven't quite found what I am after- in terms of database design.

Here is what I was thinking:

messages:

message_recipients:

However, I am not 100% sure on the types of relationships there should be between the users, messages and message_recipients. Users would have many messages. Messages would belong to a User. But, how would I factor in the message_recipients table?

Feel free to suggest a different design :)

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1971

Answers (2)

Mayank Pandeyz
Mayank Pandeyz

Reputation: 26258

Try this kind of structure:

messages:

id          - int, autoincrement id
parent_id   - int. To maintain message threads
sender_id   - int. Senders Id
recipient_id- int. Recievers Id
content     - text, Message content
status      - enum('0', '1') for Read, Unread, Deleted etc

or break it into 2 or 3 table by maintaining the foreign key relationship.

Upvotes: 2

Alexey Mezenin
Alexey Mezenin

Reputation: 163758

You can create just one table with id, sender_id, recipient_id, message.

sender_id and recipient_id are foreign keys pointed to users table.

It's many to many relationship and you can treat this table as pivot, so you can define belongsToMany relations. Also you can create model for this table if you will work with it a lot.

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions