Item with multiple options

[nrsutton]

Hi

I have a real headache of a problem and was wondering if anyone can
help me.

I'm writing a system that saves stock items. Each item can have none
or an infinite number of options attached to it.

For example you can have a cupboard door as one stock item or you can
have a Polo Neck sweater with the options of size:small, medium, large
and colour: red, green, blue.

My problem is that I have no idea how to store this information in the
database. My first thought was three tables STOCK_ITEMS,
STOCK_OPTIONS, OPTION_VALUES The item name would be stored in
STOCK_ITEMS with the option names in STOCK_OPTIONS and their values in
OPTION_VALUES. This works all very well until you want to store
something that doesn't have any options. Now I have one item in
STOCK_ITEMS with one id and another item that DOES have options with a
seperate id in OPTION_VALUES.

I feel like I'm going around in circles with this and it feels like
there should be such a simple solution but I'm just not seeing it.

Is there anyone out there that can give me a pointer and show me the
ligh?. Am I looking at the problem from completly the wrong angle?
What I want is a common way to identify a stock item (even if it does
or doesn't have an option)

[Captain Paralytic]

On 12 May, 15:05, [e-mail] wrote:

Hi

I have a real headache of a problem and was wondering if anyone can
help me.

I'm writing a system that saves stock items. Each item can have none
or an infinite number of options attached to it.

For example you can have a cupboard door as one stock item or you can
have a Polo Neck sweater with the options of size:small, medium, large
and colour: red, green, blue.

My problem is that I have no idea how to store this information in the
database. My first thought was three tables STOCK_ITEMS,
STOCK_OPTIONS, OPTION_VALUES The item name would be stored in
STOCK_ITEMS with the option names in STOCK_OPTIONS and their values in
OPTION_VALUES. This works all very well until you want to store
something that doesn't have any options. Now I have one item in
STOCK_ITEMS with one id and another item that DOES have options with a
seperate id in OPTION_VALUES.

I feel like I'm going around in circles with this and it feels like
there should be such a simple solution but I'm just not seeing it.

Is there anyone out there that can give me a pointer and show me the
ligh?. Am I looking at the problem from completly the wrong angle?
What I want is a common way to identify a stock item (even if it does
or doesn't have an option)

This is a database question, not a php one.

If you are using mysql, I should go ask it on comp.databases.mysql.
Otherwise, at a push alt.php.sql