Question

I’ve created two simple tables in phpmyadmin. A list of “content creators” and a list of “content creator types”. Each “content creator” can have multiple “content creator types” associated with them so this is a one-many relationship. In phpmyadmin I created the following relationship.

ALTER TABLE  `contentcreator` 
ADD FOREIGN KEY (  `ContCreat_TypeID` ) 
  REFERENCES `MyDatabase`.`contentcreator_types` (`ContCreat_TypeID`) 
  ON DELETE RESTRICT ON UPDATE RESTRICT ;

Now when I try to insert data (using the insert data interface in phpmyadmin) into the table “content creator” – I get a drop down to allow me to choose one of “content creator type IDs”. However I want to be able to add multiple “content creator type IDs” to each content creator. How do I do this within phpmyadmin using the insert data interface?

Answer 1

It sounds like you have a many to many relationship here, not a one to many. You need to add an intersection table with foreign keys to both your types table, and your content creators table.

If you wanted to do this as a one to many relationship, the side that is many gets the foreign key, not the side that is one. Meaning you would have a foreign key to the content Creators table on the content creators type table. Then each content creator would get a new entry in the type table for each type that it had, however you would have duplication in that scenario.

Many TO Many:

ContentCreatorID CreatorName
---------------- ------------------
1                Creator1
2                Creator2
3                Creator3

CreatorTypes (intersection Table)


ContentCreatorID TypeID
---------------- ------------------
1                1
1                2
2                3
3                2


Types

TypeID            TypeName
---------------- ------------------
1                 Type1
2                 Type2
3                 Type3