i have an entity with a lot of fields(like facebook user Information with multiple levels like Basic Information, Contact Information, and...). and i want to use it exactly like facebook . i mean i want several tabs to put related fields in there. the easiest way is to store all of them in a table but it's too nasty . is there any way to do this better? i know something about database hierarchical design, but is there a way to do this in symfony 1.4 and use it's form creator either?
thanks.
First of all: where do you need help? In the view or in the model?
If you want it too look like Facebook, we're talking View. This has nothing to do with Symfony, but just HTML (with some CSS/JS probably).
If you're talking about how to store this information: the information your describing isn't "hierarchical". Hierarchical is about trees and things like that, most of the time with an almost infinite depth.
Here you're talking about a strict structure (you, as developer, know exactly which fields you want to render, and define these yourself). You could look into Entity-Attribute-Value stores. But beware: when implementing some like this in mySQL, it won't be easy to do 'complex' queries. (Even a query like: "List all people in New York, older than 30 years old", is not rendered easy).
So why won't you go with a table with a lot of columns? There's nothing nasty about that! That you, as a human being, may have troubles viewing these data in phpMyAdmin, has nothing to do with how a computer manages this information ;-). You could split up the 'User' model in a seperate 'UserProfile' model (with a one-on-one relation), so you can easily refer to users on other pages (where you don't need all profile data).
You can use Doctrine Nested sets. It is basically a tree structure contained in your database. I have a demo of how this can be used, but the source code might scare you.
Take a look at the demo to give you an idea of what you can do. If you are leaning towards this option, then you should definitely check out the tutorial link I posted below to get started.
Demo
Source Code
Doctrine Nested Sets Documentation
Tutorial on Nested Sets
Related
I want to build an application that uses data from several endpoints.
Lets say I have:
JSON API for getting cinema data
XML Export for getting data about ???
Another JSON API for something else
A csv-file for some more shit ...
In my application I want to bring all this data together and build views for it and so on ...
MY idea was to set up a database by create schemas for all these data sources, so I can do some kind of "import scripts" which I can call whenever I want to get the latest data.
I thought of schemas because I want to be able to easily adept a new API with any kind of schema.
Please enlighten me of the possibilities and best practices out there (theory and practice if possible :P)
You are totally right on making a database. But the real problem is probably not going to be how to store your data. It's going to be how to make it fit together logically and semantically.
I suggest you first take a good look at what your enpoints can provide. Get several samples from every source and analyze them if you can. How will you know which data is new? How can you match it against existing data and against data from other sources? If existing data changes or gets deleted, how will you detect and handle that? What if sources disagree on something? How and when should you run the synchronization? What will you do if one of your sources goes down? Etc.
It is extremely difficult to make data consistent if your data sources are not. As a rule, if the sources are different, they are not consistent. Thus the proverb "garbage in, garbage out". We, humans, have no problem dealing with small inconsistencies, but algorithms cannot work correctly if there are discrepancies. Even if everything fits together on paper, one usually forgets that data can change over time...
At least that's my experience in such cases.
I'm not sure if in the application you want to display all the data in the same view or if you are going to be creating different views for each of the sources. If you want to display the data in the same view, like a grid, I would recommend using inheritance or an interface depending on your data and needs. I would recommend setting this structure up in the database too using different tables for the different sources and having a parent table related to all them that has a type associated with it.
Here's a good thread with discussion about choosing an interface or inheritance.
Inheritance vs. interface in C#
And here are some examples of representing inheritance in a database.
How can you represent inheritance in a database?
I am creating a CV website, but in difference to most I am trying to make it with database. I mean that usually such websites are static and all of the information is hard coded in the HTML. Since I am back-end developer I like to make it so everything including buttons and welcome messages are taken from the database. I am trying to store projects that I have worked on. There are several types:
Github Repository - a project that is done purely on github.
Work related - a project I have done on work and there is no github repository of it, only link to view the final result
UpWork or other freelance website - as a freelancer I have projects to fix something on a website and those projects can be viewed only on my profile there and I would like to list them with link to UpWork or wherever there is information on what exactly I was hired to do.
Now my question is - should I have different Entities and therefore different tables for these types of projects or should I have all of the possible properties in one table. For example if it is Github there is repository field and if it is work related then there is company field. If it is freelance it has link to the website I was hired on. Also there are different sub-types - web applications, desktop applications, games and so on.
As you can guess the changes are small (1 or 2 properties). I could very easily leave empty some properties and have another property projectType, but is this the right way? Should I have different tables and entities for them?
To give some info - I can work with both MySQL and NoSQL and I havent decided yet on which one should my website be made on. I am currently thinking about NoSQL. This means I am asking on how to store the projects on MySQL and NoSQL (by NoSQL I mean MongoDB). If it helps the languages I am choosing from are PHP (MySQL) and JavaScript (NoSQL)
I know that usually questions without code are downvoted, but this is more of a logic based problem as I know how to do it, but I don't know the best practices for my situation. This being said here is a small code for you -
console.log('Thank you in advance')
MongoDB lends itself very well to this exact situation.
You can create a collection where documents leave out certain fields if they are not needed for that type. The querying parameters of MongoDB allow you to check $exists on fields if you need to, and documents are stored efficiently, only taking up memory where a field is needed.
You can even setup a sparse index which is not required for every document. As long as your core document structure is the same, it is a good idea to keep them in one collection, and vary them based on their type.
I know that it cannot yet. But having many-to-many is a common thing in my opinion and I would like to ask some suggestions or opinions about the method I follow.
I work on a blog engine where the user can create blog entries and she/he can add multiple tags to it. There are Blog_Entry, Tag and a Blog_Entry_Tag tables. The Blog_Entry table has navigation property to Blog_Entry_Tag table. The Tag table also has navigation property to Blog_Entry_Tag table. Both are one-to many relation. Between Tag and Blog_Entry tables there is no any navigation property. The joining table exposed to Breeze.
When creating and editing new entry the blog entry related data managed separately from the tag related data. At saving I have to manage that the proper data will be inserted into the Blog_Entry_Tag table. The save logic is complicated but managable however, I can't leverage on Breeze great capabilities.
How do you manage situation like this? I know the question might be general, but I went through the available documentation and whatever was displayed in Google without getting closer to the solution or getting even smarter. If you have blogs, examples about this case I really appreciate your help!
Take a look at these two documents, hopefully one of these may offer some help.
http://www.getbreezenow.com/documentation/presenting-many-many
breeze: many-to-many issues when saving
I've got several pages about products that I want to load into a database and instead of creating a separate html page for each product, I was thinking of creating a single page that will display whatever product the user clicks on. Each product page will have a similar structure with its name, picture, description, bullet points for features (varies from product to product), price.
My question is if I want to store all those information in a database (I imagine I would need a different field for each paragraph, picture, name, each bullet point, etc) is there a way to get around that? To store all those information in a single field or as few as possible and still keep the formatting. It seems like I would be overloaded with the number of fields I have to manage.
I'm starting to doubt if this was even a good idea to begin with...
Do not store all that information in a single field. If you are going to do that, then just create the HTML page and save yourself the trouble of having a database that you aren't properly utilizing.
What you need to do is identify the relationship between all parts of your page. For example, if a single product can have multiple photos you would want to define a multi table relationship that defines a one-to-many relationship between the Product and ProductImage tables.
Grasping how relational databases relate to the data you are working with can be difficult at first and it might pay off to hire someone for a few hours to go over what you are trying to do and how to implement this effectively using a DB. Since it is a real world example for you it will be an excellent way to learn. Good luck!
You're not the first person to want to do something like this. It's a very common problem that has a well established solution. You need to use what's called a web content management system. WCMSs allow you to use a common template throughout your website while filling in specific stuff for each page. I recommend Joomla because it's easy to setup, easy to use, and most web hosts support it. But you can also look at stuff like Wordpress or Drupal. Wordpress is more blog centric though and Drupal has a steep learning curve.
I'm developing a CodeIgniter based site that will be very multi language heavy. Plan is to launch with 5 langs but to rapidly expand. A lot of the content will be user generated and split across multiple tables. In the past I have used the built in language files but I don't think they are going to work in this case. What's the best way to do translations in the database. Should I have a translation table for each table in my DB, eg;
ProductsLang
RetailersLang
CategoriesLang
Etc
Or should I look at creating some sort of central dictionary table. Has anyone done this in CI in the past, couldn't find any existing libaries out there. Your thoughts would be much appreciated.
From my view it really depends on the solution you need - it seems like you're developing an online shop? If that's the case, I would combine both options. Static language files for labels (and other content that shouldn't change).
Although - IMO - the product database shouldn't be aware of an actual translation part; I would rather take the category table and put in the necessary languages as main categories and provide with product-specific categories below the language categories.
At this point you'd might be thinking of all the duplicate products attached to any given language category - but I believe this is a flexible solution for each of the languages.
And a simple script could allow for copying a language category to another, making translation available for the exact same products.