Question

What’s the best way to structure a MySQL table for storing admin settings?

Like this?

Setting _|_ Value
setting1 |   a
setting2 |   b
setting3 |   c
setting4 |   d
setting5 |   e

Or like this?

|--------|_setting1_|_setting2_|_setting3_|_setting4_|_setting5_|
Settings |    a     |    b     |    c     |    d     |    e     |

Or maybe some other way?

Answer 1

Table name = ‘settings’

name  | varchar <-- primary key
value | varchar

Then you can query like this:

SELECT * FROM settings WHERE name = 'default_printer';

This option is nice and easy and it will work well with 10, or 10,000 settings. With the other option you’ll have to add a new column, which would be a completely pointless waste of time.

Edit

After your 1st comment you could choose multiple values like this:

SELECT * FROM settings WHERE name IN ('default_printer','default_page_size');

🙂