Hi.
That would depend on your data. But you are quite right not to want to store them all in a single column. That would violate the first normal form.
If the number of checkboxes is not going to change, and each row of the table should only contain a single value for each of them, the most efficient method would probably be to simply add a column for each of them.
- +-----+-------+-------+-------+
-
| ID | Box1 | Box2 | Box3 |
-
+-----+-------+-------+-------+
-
| 1 | TRUE | FALSE | NULL |
-
| 2 | TRUE | NULL | FALSE |
-
| 3 | NULL | TRUE | FALSE |
-
+-----+-------+-------+-------+
(If you feel this would clutter your original table, you could also simply put these columns in a separate table and set up a 1:N relationship between them)
But, if the checkboxes are dynamic, and you want to be able to add/remove boxes from the list, you may want to set up a N:M relationship, where each row in your table could have a value for each checkbox.
This would require a separate table to store the ceckboxes, and an intermediary table to store the values each row in table A has for each checkbox.
Like:
- /* Your table */
-
+-----+
-
| AID |
-
+-----+
-
| 1 |
-
| 2 |
-
| 3 |
-
+-----+
-
-
/* The table for the boxes */
-
+-------+-------+
-
| BoxID | Label |
-
+-------+-------+
-
| 1 | Box1 |
-
| 2 | Box2 |
-
| 3 | Box3 |
-
+-------+-------+
-
-
/* The intermediary table
-
* linking them together */
-
+-----+-------+-------+
-
| AID | BoxID | Value |
-
+-----+-------+-------+
-
| 1 | 1 | TRUE |
-
| 1 | 2 | FALSE |
-
| 2 | 1 | TRUE |
-
| 2 | 3 | FALSE |
-
| 3 | 2 | TRUE |
-
| 3 | 3 | FALSE |
-
+-----+-------+-------+
See what I mean?
107
