Question

I have the code below:

<?php
$con = mysql_connect("localhost","will","blahblahblah");
if (!$con)
  {
  die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
  }

mysql_select_db("bombom", $con);

$sql="INSERT INTO links (link, notes)
VALUES
('$_POST[link]','$_POST[notes]')";

if (!mysql_query($sql,$con))
  {
  die('Error: ' . mysql_error());
  }
echo "1 record added";

mysql_close($con)
?>

This adds a new record to the table in my database. I will be handling multiple users with this database, should each user have their own table or just their own record?

I was thinking just their own record but how would I code it so that it creates two new columns for everyone link and notes submitted from the form and add to their record?

Answer 1

You’ve got a fundamental misunderstanding of how database tables go. You don’t create a column or table for each user. You create one table for all users, and have a method to uniquely identify which user the row belongs to.

table users:
    id int
    name varchar(32)
    password varchar(3)

table links:
    user_id int // foreign key pointing to users.id
    link text,
    notes text

Then, to find any one user’s links, you’d do

SELECT link, notes FROM links WHERE useri_id=XXX;