Dewald Troskie wrote:
I'm relatively new to the MySQL / Web development - database
environmeent, having moved from Microsoft SQL. Just two questions ?
1. I have an ASP.Net page that commits data to a MySQL database. I have
several check boxes on the page. What data type do I define my fields in
the database as (similar to a boolean value) to write a checked value.
There are a few ways you can solve this. If you only have a couple of
set values that will never change, then you could use an ENUM data type
with the options as entries, but probably more appropriately you would
be best to have a look up table that contains an ID field and a
description for each of the values used by the check boxes. Dynamically
generate the checkboxes on your page from a query of this look up table,
setting the value of each to be the unique ID assigned to the
description. Store the selected IDs in your database rather than the
description alongside some form of "response" identifier. If users can
select more than one checkbox, then you will probably need some form of
link table between your "response" table and your lookup table, so that
you don't end up with a many to many relationship in your database
structure. Its really a question of database design rather than
datatype and this shouldn't be any different whatever database engine
you use.
2. I have a foreign key field in the database. On the web page I have a
drop down list populated by the text value from table in the database
that the foreign key refers to. How can I convert this to a integer
reference in the page so that I can write the foreign key.
This actually an HTML question rather than MySQL, but each OPTION tag in
a select has a VALUE attribute. Place your foriegn key in this
attribute and the text bewteen open and close OPTION tags. eg.
<option value="{FOREIGNKEYID}">{TEXTDESCRIPTION}</option>
I don't know ASP.NET especially well, so the words in {} are intended to
show where ASP.NET variables returned by your query would go. In CFML
this would be :
<cfoutput query="qryLookUp"><option
value="#qryLookUp.ID#">#qryLookUp.Description#</option></cfoutput>
Where ID and Description are the column names in the look up table.
Hope this helps
Regards
Stephen
--
MySQL General Mailing List
For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql
To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
