[phplib] Best use of User variables From: Philippe Paravicini (philippe <email protected>)
Date: 07/07/00

I am currently writing a phplib web application that will enable architects
and contractors in California to enter information about their Construction
Projects so that they can request an energy compliance report from the site.

Since the Construction information is quite extensive, it will be entered
through multiple non-sequential forms (the forms can be filled in any
order). Once Architects are happy with the information that they have
entered, they will hit a 'request report' and live happily ever after
receiving their energy compliance report.

I would like to store the Construction information in the dabatase in
non-binary format so that it can be read by visual inspection without
de-serializing it.

On the other hand, I would like to keep a phplib user variable that stores a
user's currently active project (the one that is currently open) so that the
user can return to the site and fill the forms over several sessions.

I am juggling the following 2 alternatives:

(1) I could keep the Active Project information as a hash in a phplib user
variable, and write it to the Project Table in the db periodically (if so,
when do I write it to the database in un-serialized form? only when a report
is requested?)

or,

(2) I could store only the Id of the project in the user variable for
reference, and update the db directly whenever the Architect switches from
one form to the other which would involve 1 or 2 tables. (if so, how does
the performance of this compare to saving a hash into a phplib user
variable?)

I am leaning towards (2) because I figure that serializing a long hash on
every form change is probably more costly than doing updates to a handful of
fields in a database table directly, but I am not sure of this.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
I am using phplib7.2b, php4 and mySQL 3.22.

Thanks to all the phplib Gods for all your work towards us mere mortals.

Philippe Paravicini
eCommerce Developer

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