Symfony private messages

Question

I want to make private messages in my site. I want that user can delete received or sent messages. For it I need two tables one for send message and one for receive....Is it to possible that when user send messages, it automatically add fro two tables? or it is better to make some relations with tables? or maybe exist better solution?

Answer 1

I think you need just one table:

Message:
  columns:
    from: integer
    to: integer
    header:  string(100)
    body:    blob
    show_in_outcoming: 
      type: boolean
      default: true
    show_in_incoming: 
      type: boolean
      default: true
    is_read:  
      type: boolean
      default: false
  UserFrom:
    class: sfGuardUser
    local: from
    foreign: id
    foreignType: one
    type: one
  UserTo:
    class: sfGuardUser
    local: to
    foreign: id
    foreignType: one
    type: one

where

• is_read indicates whether or not the message been read (false - unread, true - read - for incoming messages only)

If the user who sends the message want to delete it, we simply hide it (not delete from the DB) - set show_in_outcoming to false. If the user who received the message want to delete it, we hide it too - set show_in_incoming to false. This approach allows us to recover the "hidden" messages (or remove them altogether)