Question

I have set up four additional tables for my plugin to use what I am trying to do is take a name and assign it a ID then use this data to populate drop down menus with a name and the same for class and position I am unsure as to how to do this correctly this is what i have so far.

$sql = "CREATE TABLE $tableName (
  recordID int NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  PRIMARY KEY(recordID),
  driverID int,
  driverName varchar(30),
  classID int,
  driverClass varchar(20),
  posID,
  driverPosition varchar(6),
  trackName varchar(30),
  raceDate date
);";

$sql = "CREATE TABLE $driverTableName (
  driverID int NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  PRIMARY KEY(driverID),
  driverName varchar(30)

);";

$sql = "CREATE TABLE $classTableName (
  classID int NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  PRIMARY KEY(classID),
  className varchar (20)

);";

$sql = "CREATE TABLE $posTableName (
  posID int NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  PRIMARY KEY(posID),
  posName varchar(6)

);";

The bottom three tables will store the data I want to populate the drop down boxes to create a record with I am unsure as to how to link them to the top table where this record will be stored.

Answer 1

This is pretty much a indexing issue. If you are going to access the database separately to the standard calls that WordPress provides, you should at the very least use http://codex.wordpress.org/Class_Reference/wpdb as it will save you some coding time.

The rest of it is a MySQL question. (Assuming you are using MySQL) In how to properly index the data together and then parsing the data as it comes in.