I am currently building a small crm application. I need each user to be able to define their own custom fields. I am currently building this crm using php and mysql.
Example: I have a “customer” table which has the standard fields: name, phone, address, email, etc. But i want to allow the user (unique session) to add fields that are custom to his/her business which are only accessible to him (not other users). I then want these custom fields to function just like all the other fields in the table (ability to search, send and received data). I am hoping i can accomplish this in mysql and php but am open to any technology or solution that is considered best practice. Thank you for your help.
@Matt H: Is this method considered AEV or just standard relational db?
So because i will have many users in many dif industries that will want to add their own custom fields to a number of different tables (contacts, transactions, events, etc) i am assuming that i would need the customfield table to have a user_fk/id or company fk/id, a related table fk/id, an id, and a field name? Am i on the right track? Then in the need to create a 2nd table to hold the data for each custom field buy having a customfield fk/id, customer fk/id, id and a data field to hold the actual data. Is this correct?
Ok so once i build those two additional tables how do I add them to the contacts table so it looks like one big table for the user, instead of the 3 tables?
Thanks again for you help.
Answer
after much research i have found that most people who wish to accomplish this are using document databases not relational databases.