What should be the Schema for Donation table? - mysql

Question

I am creating a web portal for an organization and I am a bit confused on this part.
They will be receiving donations from their registered members as well as guests. I was thinking of creating a users table that is solely used for registered members and no guests etc. because users table will contain unique "email" column and I don't want it to be null.
For donations, I can add user_id foreign key for users table.
What I am thinking of doing is that I should add "name" and "mobile" columns in donations table, so that if it's a guest, we should only get his name and phone number and put in donations table. Do you think this is the right way?
For just demo purpose I am showing you the table:
users table
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `users` (
`id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`name` varchar(255) COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci NOT NULL,
`email` varchar(255) COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci NOT NULL,
`password` varchar(255) COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci NOT NULL,
`mobile` varchar(255) COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci NOT NULL,
`status` tinyint(1) NOT NULL,
`created_at` timestamp NULL DEFAULT NULL,
`updated_at` timestamp NULL DEFAULT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
UNIQUE KEY `users_email_unique` (`email`),
UNIQUE KEY `users_mobile_unique` (`mobile`),
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_unicode_ci AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;
donations table
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `donations` (
`id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`user_id` int(10) unsigned DEFAULT NULL,
`name` varchar(255) COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci NOT NULL,
`mobile` varchar(255) COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci NOT NULL,
`status` tinyint(1) NOT NULL,
`created_at` timestamp NULL DEFAULT NULL,
`updated_at` timestamp NULL DEFAULT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
KEY `users_user_id_foreign` (`user_id`),
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_unicode_ci AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;
Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks

Answer 1

There are many ways to solve data problems - some better than others. I would not have a separate user table if you are already getting some details. Rather have a REGISTERED_USER column or along those lines to denote a "full user" versus a partial. Then everything stays relatively simple AND the user has an option to become a full user later, which I assume you want for donations... :)