List of values : Code constants or database?

Question

I wanted to know if there was a good practice for list of values management. For example I have a database table logs as following :

---------------
| logs        |
|-------------|
| id          |
| idLogType   |
| message     |
| date        |
---------------

My question is about the field "idLogType". I know that an enum is not the good way to handle this kind of field because if I want to add new values I have to ALTER the table. So I'm going to create a list of values.

What is your recommandation to handle list of values ?

1. Only with PHP constants?

class LogTypeValues {
  const LOGTYPE_CREATION = 1;
  const LOGTYPE_EDITION  = 2;
  const LOGTYPE_DELETION = 3;

  private $_logTypes = array();

  public function __construct() {
    $this->_logTypes[self::LOGTYPE_CREATION] = "Creation";
    $this->_logTypes[self::LOGTYPE_EDITION]  = "Edition";
    $this->_logTypes[self::LOGTYPE_DELETION] = "Deletion";
  }

  public function getId($logType) { ... }
  public function getLogType($id) { ... }
}

$request = $pdo->prepare('INSERT INTO logs SET idLogType = :idLogType, ...');
$request->execute(array('idLogType' => LogTypeValues::LOGTYPE_CREATION));

2. Only with database ?

------------
| logTypes |
------------
| id       |
| logType  |
------------

<?php
$request = $pdo->prepare('INSERT INTO logs SET idLogType = 1, ...');
$request->execute(array());

3. In database but also with PHP constants ?

------------
| logTypes |
------------
| id       |
| logType  |
------------

class LogTypeValues {
  const LOGTYPE_CREATION = 1;
  const LOGTYPE_EDITION  = 2;
  const LOGTYPE_DELETION = 3;
}

What do you thing about these 3 methods?

Answer 1

My favorite solution would be:

Stores log types in database:

CREATE TABLE logTypes (
    id (SMALLINT, PK)
    code VARCHAR(32) UNIQUE    
) 

Create constants in code

class logTypes {
    const CREATE_USER = 1;
    const EDIT_USER = 2;
    ...
}

and choose a sync policy:

• Create the logTypes class from DB => the code is a "cache of the db", if cache is not generated the project won't work
• Create the DB from the code => The DB is only usefull for sql reports and applying SQL features to logtypes search, etc...

Example:

SELECT * FROM logs JOIN logTypes USING logtype_id WHERE logType LIKE "% CREATION"