seperator instead of a comma for listed items in DB?

[news]

I'm making a recipe database, and need to have DB fields in mySQL that
will have lists of values that would get sent to an array to be worked
on.

I anticipate that at times a comma will need to be used in the value
itself. So, what's a commonly used symbol or something that people tend
to use as a separator of a list that would then be used in the split()
function to send the elements into an array?

Nearly every punctuation has a chance of being in the actual data. Any
suggestions?

Thanks!
Liam

[David Haynes]

ne**@celticbear.com wrote:

I'm making a recipe database, and need to have DB fields in mySQL that
will have lists of values that would get sent to an array to be worked
on.

I anticipate that at times a comma will need to be used in the value
itself. So, what's a commonly used symbol or something that people tend
to use as a separator of a list that would then be used in the split()
function to send the elements into an array?

Nearly every punctuation has a chance of being in the actual data. Any
suggestions?

Thanks!
Liam

Usually the vertical bar '|' is a good choice.

-david-

[Chung Leong]

ne**@celticbear.com wrote:

I'm making a recipe database, and need to have DB fields in mySQL that
will have lists of values that would get sent to an array to be worked
on.

I anticipate that at times a comma will need to be used in the value
itself. So, what's a commonly used symbol or something that people tend
to use as a separator of a list that would then be used in the split()
function to send the elements into an array?

Nearly every punctuation has a chance of being in the actual data. Any
suggestions?

Thanks!
Liam

I usually use an ASCII control character. 0x1E is designated as a
record seperator. Don't know if MySQL would accept it or not.

[news]

Chung Leong wrote:

ne**@celticbear.com wrote:

I'm making a recipe database, and need to have DB fields in mySQL that
will have lists of values that would get sent to an array to be worked
on.

I anticipate that at times a comma will need to be used in the value
itself. So, what's a commonly used symbol or something that people tend
to use as a separator of a list that would then be used in the split()
function to send the elements into an array?

Nearly every punctuation has a chance of being in the actual data. Any
suggestions?

Thanks!
Liam

I usually use an ASCII control character. 0x1E is designated as a
record seperator. Don't know if MySQL would accept it or not.

Interesting.
I had to do a search on control characters and that 0x1e, because I
have no idea what they are.
(Well, except in Windows I know I can use ALT+(numpad) to write ASCII
characters, but that's beside the point.

Evidently 0x1e is shown as two carrets: ^^
When I create the full value that would go into the field, would I
simply insert ^^ between the different values before it gets sent to
mySQL, and then use ^^ as the split() seperator?
Or do I have to use that 0x1e label in some way?

Does the ^^ tell mySQL or PHP something special?
I can't seem to find anything with Google on it.

Thanks for the reply!
-Liam

[Sjoerd]

ne**@celticbear.com wrote:

need to have DB fields in mySQL that
will have lists of values

Typically, one would use escape characters. For example, | would be
used to seperate two fields. A literal | would be escaped: \|. This
makes it possible to use the seperation character in the data.

Another, probably better option, would be to make a seperate table.
Instead of storing the ingredients seperated by a character like this:
1, Chinese Chicken, chicken|salt|pepper|mushrooms
Think about making a ingredients table and storing it there:

[Recipes]
1, Chinese Chicken
2, Meatloaf

[Ingredients]
1, chicken
1, salt
1, pepper
1, mushrooms
2, meat
2, loaf

This makes it easy to search and it is more logical from a DB point of
view.

[Chung Leong]

ne**@celticbear.com wrote:

Chung Leong wrote:

ne**@celticbear.com wrote:

I'm making a recipe database, and need to have DB fields in mySQL that
will have lists of values that would get sent to an array to be worked
on.

I anticipate that at times a comma will need to be used in the value
itself. So, what's a commonly used symbol or something that people tend
to use as a separator of a list that would then be used in the split()
function to send the elements into an array?

Nearly every punctuation has a chance of being in the actual data. Any
suggestions?

Thanks!
Liam

I usually use an ASCII control character. 0x1E is designated as a
record seperator. Don't know if MySQL would accept it or not.

Interesting.
I had to do a search on control characters and that 0x1e, because I
have no idea what they are.
(Well, except in Windows I know I can use ALT+(numpad) to write ASCII
characters, but that's beside the point.

Evidently 0x1e is shown as two carrets: ^^
When I create the full value that would go into the field, would I
simply insert ^^ between the different values before it gets sent to
mySQL, and then use ^^ as the split() seperator?
Or do I have to use that 0x1e label in some way?

Does the ^^ tell mySQL or PHP something special?
I can't seem to find anything with Google on it.

Do something like implode("\x1B", $record);. The character is
definitely not two carets.

[news]

Sjoerd wrote:

ne**@celticbear.com wrote:

need to have DB fields in mySQL that
will have lists of values

Typically, one would use escape characters. For example, | would be
used to seperate two fields. A literal | would be escaped: \|. This
makes it possible to use the seperation character in the data.

Another, probably better option, would be to make a seperate table.
Instead of storing the ingredients seperated by a character like this:
1, Chinese Chicken, chicken|salt|pepper|mushrooms
Think about making a ingredients table and storing it there:

[Recipes]
1, Chinese Chicken
2, Meatloaf

[Ingredients]
1, chicken
1, salt
1, pepper
1, mushrooms
2, meat
2, loaf

This makes it easy to search and it is more logical from a DB point of
view.

Well, since you brought it up, speaking of the DB, that's kind of what
I had in mind, but, differemt.
The tbl_ingredients would have two columns, ID and NAME like:
1, garlic
2, chicken
3, pepper
4, salt
etc...

Then the tbl_recipes would have colums like:
ID, NAME, INGREDIENTS, MEASUREMENTS, NOTES
with data like:
1, Chinese Chicken, 1|2|3|4, 1 clove|1 lbs. breast| 1 tsp.| 1 T., more
stuff here....

Where the ingredients would be the ingredient's ID in a CSV, (but
obviously using something other than a comma,).
That's the best I could come up with to be able to have a list of
unknown and constantly changing number of ingredients that would save
space in the table.

The problem I'm seeing with your suggestion is that the [ingredients]
table would have a lot of redundant info.
Every recipe that required pepper would have a row with a recipie ID
and a value of "garlic," which would be repeated in the database n
number of times.

I suppose of course, if the database remains small, that amount of
redundant data isn't going to hurt performance at all.... and would
possibly be easier to manage....

Thanks for the reply and the feedback!!
-Liam

[Jerry Stuckle]

ne**@celticbear.com wrote:

I'm making a recipe database, and need to have DB fields in mySQL that
will have lists of values that would get sent to an array to be worked
on.

I anticipate that at times a comma will need to be used in the value
itself. So, what's a commonly used symbol or something that people tend
to use as a separator of a list that would then be used in the split()
function to send the elements into an array?

Nearly every punctuation has a chance of being in the actual data. Any
suggestions?

Thanks!
Liam

Liam,

This violates first normal form (more than one value in a row/column).

Rather, create a second table containing the recipe id and a single value, then
add each of the values to this second table.

--
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
js*******@attglobal.net
==================

[David Haynes]

ne**@celticbear.com wrote:

Sjoerd wrote:

ne**@celticbear.com wrote:

need to have DB fields in mySQL that
will have lists of values

Typically, one would use escape characters. For example, | would be
used to seperate two fields. A literal | would be escaped: \|. This
makes it possible to use the seperation character in the data.

Another, probably better option, would be to make a seperate table.
Instead of storing the ingredients seperated by a character like this:
1, Chinese Chicken, chicken|salt|pepper|mushrooms
Think about making a ingredients table and storing it there:

[Recipes]
1, Chinese Chicken
2, Meatloaf

[Ingredients]
1, chicken
1, salt
1, pepper
1, mushrooms
2, meat
2, loaf

This makes it easy to search and it is more logical from a DB point of
view.

Well, since you brought it up, speaking of the DB, that's kind of what
I had in mind, but, differemt.
The tbl_ingredients would have two columns, ID and NAME like:
1, garlic
2, chicken
3, pepper
4, salt
etc...

Then the tbl_recipes would have colums like:
ID, NAME, INGREDIENTS, MEASUREMENTS, NOTES
with data like:
1, Chinese Chicken, 1|2|3|4, 1 clove|1 lbs. breast| 1 tsp.| 1 T., more
stuff here....

Where the ingredients would be the ingredient's ID in a CSV, (but
obviously using something other than a comma,).
That's the best I could come up with to be able to have a list of
unknown and constantly changing number of ingredients that would save
space in the table.

The problem I'm seeing with your suggestion is that the [ingredients]
table would have a lot of redundant info.
Every recipe that required pepper would have a row with a recipie ID
and a value of "garlic," which would be repeated in the database n
number of times.

I suppose of course, if the database remains small, that amount of
redundant data isn't going to hurt performance at all.... and would
possibly be easier to manage....

Thanks for the reply and the feedback!!
-Liam

How about this instead?

Three tables: Recipe, Quantity, Ingredient

Recipe
ID, NAME, DESCRIPTION, AUTHOR, ...

Ingredient
ID, DESCRIPTION

Quantity
RECIPE_ID, INGREDIENT_ID, AMOUNT, UNIT

That way you could have:

Recipe:
1, 'Chinese Chicken', 'A neat recipe that is easy to make', ...

Ingredient:
1, 'Garlic'
2, 'Chicken'
3, 'Salt'
4, 'Pepper'

Quantity:
1, 1, 1, 'clove'
1, 2, 1, 'lb white meat'
1, 3, 1, 'tsp'
1, 4, 1, 'tbsp'

Then, let's say you have another recipe that calls for salt.

Recipe:
2, 'Mashed Potatoes', 'Light and fluffy mashed potatoes'

Ingredient:
5, 'Potatoes'
6, 'Buttermilk'

Quantity:
2, 3, 1, 'tbsp'
2, 5, 2, 'lbs cubed'
2, 6, .25, 'cup'
2, 4, 0, 'to taste'

etc.

-david-

[news]

David Haynes wrote:

ne**@celticbear.com wrote:

Sjoerd wrote:

ne**@celticbear.com wrote:
need to have DB fields in mySQL that
will have lists of values
Typically, one would use escape characters. For example, | would be
used to seperate two fields. A literal | would be escaped: \|. This
makes it possible to use the seperation character in the data.

Another, probably better option, would be to make a seperate table.
Instead of storing the ingredients seperated by a character like this:
1, Chinese Chicken, chicken|salt|pepper|mushrooms
Think about making a ingredients table and storing it there:

[Recipes]
1, Chinese Chicken
2, Meatloaf

[Ingredients]
1, chicken
1, salt
1, pepper
1, mushrooms
2, meat
2, loaf

This makes it easy to search and it is more logical from a DB point of
view.

Well, since you brought it up, speaking of the DB, that's kind of what
I had in mind, but, differemt.
The tbl_ingredients would have two columns, ID and NAME like:
1, garlic
2, chicken
3, pepper
4, salt
etc...

Then the tbl_recipes would have colums like:
ID, NAME, INGREDIENTS, MEASUREMENTS, NOTES
with data like:
1, Chinese Chicken, 1|2|3|4, 1 clove|1 lbs. breast| 1 tsp.| 1 T., more
stuff here....

Where the ingredients would be the ingredient's ID in a CSV, (but
obviously using something other than a comma,).
That's the best I could come up with to be able to have a list of
unknown and constantly changing number of ingredients that would save
space in the table.

The problem I'm seeing with your suggestion is that the [ingredients]
table would have a lot of redundant info.
Every recipe that required pepper would have a row with a recipie ID
and a value of "garlic," which would be repeated in the database n
number of times.

I suppose of course, if the database remains small, that amount of
redundant data isn't going to hurt performance at all.... and would
possibly be easier to manage....

Thanks for the reply and the feedback!!
-Liam

How about this instead?

Three tables: Recipe, Quantity, Ingredient

Recipe
ID, NAME, DESCRIPTION, AUTHOR, ...

Ingredient
ID, DESCRIPTION

Quantity
RECIPE_ID, INGREDIENT_ID, AMOUNT, UNIT

That way you could have:

[..]
-david-

Huh, OK. I hadn't thought of it that way. Intuitively it wouldn't seem
like you'd want to have the unique data that makes up the components of
the recipe in a "quantity" table as opposed to the table that contains
the recipe name and details, etc.
That erroneous thinking is what led me to the silliness of trying to
shove multiple data values into one field.
This solves (makes irrelevant) my array/CSV problem.
Thanks for the clue-by-four!
-Liam

[David Haynes]

ne**@celticbear.com wrote:

David Haynes wrote:

ne**@celticbear.com wrote:

Sjoerd wrote:
ne**@celticbear.com wrote:
> need to have DB fields in mySQL that
> will have lists of values
Typically, one would use escape characters. For example, | would be
used to seperate two fields. A literal | would be escaped: \|. This
makes it possible to use the seperation character in the data.

Another, probably better option, would be to make a seperate table.
Instead of storing the ingredients seperated by a character like this:
1, Chinese Chicken, chicken|salt|pepper|mushrooms
Think about making a ingredients table and storing it there:

[Recipes]
1, Chinese Chicken
2, Meatloaf

[Ingredients]
1, chicken
1, salt
1, pepper
1, mushrooms
2, meat
2, loaf

This makes it easy to search and it is more logical from a DB point of
view.
Well, since you brought it up, speaking of the DB, that's kind of what
I had in mind, but, differemt.
The tbl_ingredients would have two columns, ID and NAME like:
1, garlic
2, chicken
3, pepper
4, salt
etc...

Then the tbl_recipes would have colums like:
ID, NAME, INGREDIENTS, MEASUREMENTS, NOTES
with data like:
1, Chinese Chicken, 1|2|3|4, 1 clove|1 lbs. breast| 1 tsp.| 1 T., more
stuff here....

Where the ingredients would be the ingredient's ID in a CSV, (but
obviously using something other than a comma,).
That's the best I could come up with to be able to have a list of
unknown and constantly changing number of ingredients that would save
space in the table.

The problem I'm seeing with your suggestion is that the [ingredients]
table would have a lot of redundant info.
Every recipe that required pepper would have a row with a recipie ID
and a value of "garlic," which would be repeated in the database n
number of times.

I suppose of course, if the database remains small, that amount of
redundant data isn't going to hurt performance at all.... and would
possibly be easier to manage....

Thanks for the reply and the feedback!!
-Liam

How about this instead?

Three tables: Recipe, Quantity, Ingredient

Recipe
ID, NAME, DESCRIPTION, AUTHOR, ...

Ingredient
ID, DESCRIPTION

Quantity
RECIPE_ID, INGREDIENT_ID, AMOUNT, UNIT

That way you could have:

[..]
-david-

Huh, OK. I hadn't thought of it that way. Intuitively it wouldn't seem
like you'd want to have the unique data that makes up the components of
the recipe in a "quantity" table as opposed to the table that contains
the recipe name and details, etc.
That erroneous thinking is what led me to the silliness of trying to
shove multiple data values into one field.
This solves (makes irrelevant) my array/CSV problem.
Thanks for the clue-by-four!
-Liam

Glad to help.

The 'Quantity' table is better known as a 'many-to-many' join table and
is used quite a lot in database schema design. It is called
'many-to-many' since a recipe may use many ingredients and an ingredient
may be used in many recipes.

-david-

[Gordon Burditt]

>I'm making a recipe database, and need to have DB fields in mySQL that

will have lists of values that would get sent to an array to be worked
on.
If you're putting a list of values in a single field, that represents
a one-to-many relationship, and calls for use of another table.
For example, a table called Ingredients which contains the
ingredient, quantity, and ID of the recipe to which it belongs.
I anticipate that at times a comma will need to be used in the value
itself. So, what's a commonly used symbol or something that people tend
to use as a separator of a list that would then be used in the split()
function to send the elements into an array?

Nearly every punctuation has a chance of being in the actual data. Any
suggestions?

Use another table.

Gordon L. Burditt

[JDS]

On Mon, 17 Apr 2006 08:12:58 -0700, ne**@celticbear.com wrote:

Nearly every punctuation has a chance of being in the actual data. Any
suggestions?

You can use a multi-character separator.

@@@

or
@!@

or

THIS_IS_THE_SEPARATOR

etc.
Who says a split() field separator has to be one character?
--
JDS | je*****@example.invalid
| http://www.newtnotes.com
DJMBS | http://newtnotes.com/doctor-jeff-master-brainsurgeon/

[JDS]

On Mon, 17 Apr 2006 12:09:24 -0700, ne**@celticbear.com wrote:

Then the tbl_recipes would have colums like:
ID, NAME, INGREDIENTS, MEASUREMENTS, NOTES
with data like:
1, Chinese Chicken, 1|2|3|4, 1 clove|1 lbs. breast| 1 tsp.| 1 T., more
stuff here....

You *could* do that but typically a reational database will use *another*
table to "link" the one-to-many relationship together.

table 1: ingredients
table 2: recipe
table 3: recipe-to-ingredients-linker

Table 1 and 2 would be as you described but table 3 would be (roughly) as
follows:

create table recipe_ingredients (
id int()
recipe_id int()
ingredient_id int()
... additional_columns ...
)

You then would join all three tables using recipe_id to join recipes to
the linker and then using ingredient_id to join to the ingredients.

This way, you can have an unlimited number of ingredients.

It is clunky from a *human* point of view but fast, flexible, scalable,
etc. from a machine point of view.

(The additional_columns could be things like "quantity" or other modifiers)

later...

--
JDS | je*****@example.invalid
| http://www.newtnotes.com
DJMBS | http://newtnotes.com/doctor-jeff-master-brainsurgeon/

[Chaos_Not]

Yeah I've used triple-colons in the past :::

for me it doesn't hurt my eyes to see that. :-)
--------
I typically lurk here as I keep trying to get my hands dirty w/ both
PHP & MySQL - but one issue I have - a road block really - is the setup
of a database and how it should be broken up, etc... There is some
nice insight here.

Thanks,
Scott

[Oli Filth]

JDS wrote:

On Mon, 17 Apr 2006 08:12:58 -0700, ne**@celticbear.com wrote:

Nearly every punctuation has a chance of being in the actual data. Any
suggestions?

You can use a multi-character separator.

@@@

or
@!@

or

THIS_IS_THE_SEPARATOR

IMO (and in my experience), relying on the assumption that certain
combinations characters won't appear in the actual data is just an
accident waiting to happen (I've had disastrous experiences based on
that assumption). Admittedly, @@@ or whatever is extremely unlikely to
appear in an ingredients list, but nevertheless...

If one must violate 1NF like this, I would recommend using a single
delimiter, such as a comma. If a literal comma ever occurs in the
actual data, it should be delimited by some means, e.g.:

Eye of toad
Leg, arm of newt
Brain of goat

becomes:

Eye of toad, Leg\, arm of newt, brain of goat

Separating the data on a read will become slightly more complicated
than a simple explode(), but it will be guaranteed to work in all
situations (I think).

But having said all this, by far the best option is not violating 1NF
in the first place, by storing this information atomically in a
separate table.
--
Oli