Question

I am building an e-commerce website from scratch and have to make a special product configuration page.

It’s only 1 type of product, but it is configurable on several levels:

1. Color (about 4 different options). Value is a VARCHAR.
2. Material (about 10 different options). Value is a VARCHAR.
3. Size (About 30 different options). Has 2 Values, a width column and a height column.
4. Finish (About 20 different options). Value is a VARCHAR.
5. Other various VARCHAR options etc.

My question is what would this look like in a typical MySQL database. Do I have a table for each type of option or just one table and somehow give it enough columns and have it store all options? I will need to store orders and be able to store the information for the order in a table as well.

I also want to be able to have off the shelf products that aren’t customizeable, just like a normal store.

Any help is appreciated!!

Answer 1

I suggest that you go with one master table, with all of the product information, and a slew of lookup tables, that connects to the master table.

It should look like this:

Product_table:
   ID primary key,
   ColorInt int foreign key lkp_Color_table.ID,
   Material_int foreign key lkp_Material_table.ID,
   // snip the rest

And here’s the lookup table:

lkp_color_table:
   ID primary key,
   ColorStr varchar,
   description varchar

lkp_Material_table:
   ID primary key,
   MaterialStr varchar,
   description varchar

The Product_table can look like this:

ID||ColorInt||Material
1 ||1       ||1
2 ||1       ||2

Whereas the lkp_color_table can look like this:

ID||colorstr||description
1 ||red     ||red color
2 ||blue    ||blue color 

Note that lkp_color_table can contain unused color , same goes for other lookup tables. So if you have 30 possible colors, you just have to populate lkp_color_table with 30 items, and so on.

There is no need to create a separate Product_id for each color-material- combination, you just have to create a product_id if you use it.