Question

I have a barbers table (barberId, first name, last name)
I have a clientele table (clientId, first name, last name)

The barbershop is by appointment only. What tables do I need to create a system where clients can look at a calendar, see which barbers are available, and set appointment with a barber?

The barbers don’t have a set schedule: a barber may have a few hours here and there. Therefore a client must look in the calendar to see availability.

I am using MySQL.

Answer 1

There are too many ways for doing this and it depends on your business requirements. First I would rename clientele to just clients it will be easier to work with, easier pluralization when you set variables and so on.

If a barber has 3 hours available, does it mean 3 appointments of 1 hour? What if a certain client needs 2 hours? What would happen in this scenario?

Let’s assume that each one takes 1 hour. You can create a table called appointments, with appointment_id, barber_id, client_id, start_time, end_time. Appointments can be created by barbers or managers, client_id is set when appointment is booked. If you want to see available slots, you will query DB for any appointment that meets start_time, end_time requirements and doesn’t have a client_id. You can filter by a specific barber_id or show all available times and their respective barbers.