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sqldatabasedatabase-designforeign-keys

store in a database who's liked something

How should a database store who's liked a certain post?

Should I have a separate table which keeps tracks of all likes, and keeps every like of every post together, storing article_id, user_id, and like/dislike?

Solution

  • You are describing a N-M relationship between users and posts, where each user might ligke serveral posts and each post can be liked by several users.

    I would recommend using a bridge table, with foreign keys refering the posts and users tables.

    In a nutshell, that would look like:

    table: users
    user_id
    name
    ...

table: posts
    post_id
    title
    ...

table: users_like_posts
    user_id       -- foreign key to users(user_id)
    post_id       -- foreign key to posts(post_id)
    like_dislike