Question

I am building a website for a client. The landing page has 4 areas of customizable content. The content is minimal, it’s mainly just a reference to an image, an associated link, and an order…so 3 fields.

I am already using a lot of MySQL Tables for the other CMS related aspects, but for this one use, I am wondering if a database table really is the best option. The table would have only 4 records and there would be 3 columns. It’s not going to be written too very often, just read from as the landing page loads.

Would I be better off sticking to a MySQL table for storing this minimal amount of information since it will fit into the [programming] workflow easy enough? Or would using an XML file that stores the information be a better way to go?

UPDATE: The end user (who knows nothing about databases) will be going through a web interface I create to choose one of the 4 items they want to update, then uploading an image from their computer, then selecting the link from a list of pages on the site (or offsite). The XML file or Database table will store the location of the image on the server and the link to wrap it in.

Answer 1

A database is the correct solution for storing dynamic data. However I agree it sounds like MySQL is overkill for this situation. It also means an entire other thing to administer and manage. But using a flat-file like XML is a bad idea too. Luckily SQLite is just the thing.

Let these snippets from the SQLite site encourage you:

Rather than using fopen() to write XML or some proprietary format into disk files used by your application, use an SQLite database instead. You’ll avoid having to write and troubleshoot a parser, your data will be more easily accessible and cross-platform, and your updates will be transactional.

Because it requires no configuration and stores information in ordinary disk files, SQLite is a popular choice as the database to back small to medium-sized websites.

Read more here.

As for PHP code to interface with the database, use either PDO or the specific SQLite extension.
PDO is more flexible so I’d go with that and it should work out of the box – "PDO and the PDO_SQLITE driver is enabled by default as of PHP 5.1.0." (reference) Finding references and tutorials is super easy and just a search away.