Question

i really want to add multiple tags to a blog post when a user selects them from a field, but i was wondering in terms of storing the tags in mysql, shall i have field to hold all tags, or shall store one by one i.e.

tags_field = (cats ,animals, fur)

OR

id1 cats

id2 animals

id3 fur

i was thinking to use the first example and then explode the lists and sepearte them into single tags when presenting them to the user!!! :)) thanks

Answer 1

You should use three tables :

• One table where you store the posts ; one post per row
• One table where you store the tags ; one tag per row
• And one join-able, where you store the couples tag_id + post_id

This way, one tag can be used by several posts, and one post can have several tags — and there is no duplication of data of any kind.

So, basically, your tables would look like this :

posts
  - id ; primary key
  - date
  - title
  - content

tags
  - id ; primary key
  - name

posts_tags
  - tag_id   ; primary key ; foreign key to tags.tag_id
  - post_id  ; primary key ; foreign key to posts.post_id