Question

I would like to move my photo management system from XML to MySQL and extend functionality of my current system.

Basically, I have few things in MySQL and few in xml files. The situation right now looks like this:

• “news.xml” – single file:
  there are stored all news on my site (new uploads, votes and coments) and the structure of xml is:

  <all_news>
      <photos>
          <image image_name="photo1.jpg" path="my_photos/" date="12.12.12" info="just Uploaded!" />
      </photos>
      <comments>
          <image image_name="photo1.jpg" path="my_photos/" date="12.12.12" info="just Commented!" />
      </comments>
      <votes>
          <image image_name="photo1.jpg" path="my_photos/" date="12.12.12" info="just Voted!" />
      </votes>
  </all_news>
  

• “photo1.xml“, “photo2.xml“, “photo3.xml” … – multiple files:
  These files are created dynamically if someone leaves comment on my photo. For example if someone comment my photo, php script automatically create “photo_name.xml” file in format:

  <comments>
      <comment sender='John' text='nice photo!' who='user' date='22.12.12'/>
  </comments>
  

• “Votes” – MySQL table:
  there are stored all votes, and the structure of the table:

  • id: "photo1.jpg"
  • vote: 5
  • uid: "IP voting person"

Now I would like to merge all these things into a single mySQL database table, so each time when photo is loaded – pull these photo informations from single DB table (instead of loading few xml’s and DB in same time)…

So my question is:
What table structure is the best in this situation for easiest working on (pull data, move, delete, edit, add, sort…)?
Should I keep all things for single file in single row using unique id = “photo.jpg” and multidimensional arrays? Eg:

uid:            photo_name.jpg
path:           my_photos/
isNewPhoto:     array[true, array[info:"just uploaded!"][date:"12.12.12"]] (multi-dimensional array ??)
isNewComment:   array[true, array[info:"just commented!"][date:"12.12.12"]] (multi-dimensional array ??)
isNewVote:      array[true, array[info:"just Voted!"][date:"12.12.12"]] (multi-dimensional array ??)
votes:          1,5,3,2
votesIP:        123123123,123123123,123123123
comments:       array[array[sender][comment][date][who]]] (multi-dimensional array ??)

Answer 1

Well you CAN actually do that quite easily, when you serialize the arrays before storing their content into a single column. Wether that is a good idea is another thing. Apart from performance issues you give away any chance to make more complex things like search for single attributes.

Why do you insist on a single table ? Even when using multiple tables you can retrieve a single entry combined from multiple table entries with a single query. This gives you much more flexibility for further extensions and use cases.