Question

I just designed the Pm System[a simple rather to say], now i wanted to design a color selector for the system, when viewing all pm’s it should be shown with different colors similar to google’s approach on gmail. below is my existing database schema

**Messages:**

Id:int identity 1,1

Message: nvarchar(500)

From:nvarchar(100)

To:nvarchar(100)

IsDeleted: Bit

IsRead: Bit

How can i add a Color field in a way that it does not interfere with existing setup. Ex, color for Read messages, color for Deleted Messages[lol] so that i could show distinction using background color

Answer 1

I’m assuming (perhaps wrongly) this is being output as HTML.

Databases are for data, the colour of a read message is presentation. Rather then store a colour in the database for every single message, or even once in a table just for that, use HTML to indicate its status.

When you’re outputting the message list in HTML add a class that indicates it’s status based on the database value:

<div id="message" class="read"> ... message details ... </div>
<div id="message" class="deleted"> ... message details ... </div>

In your CSS define the style for read, deleted etc however you want:

.read { 
    background: #e0e0e0;
} 

.deleted {
    background: #e0e0e0;
    color:      #ccc;
}

This keeps your database, your HTML, and your CSS all separate which is the way it should be.