topics and posts

ok, got another one thats been teasing my brain..When someone creates a new topic on my forum, it has to create both a new field in the topics table, and the posts table. Although, I need the field in the posts table to have the linking topic_id, which links it to the topic, but this I am having trouble with, as im trying to create both the field in the posts and topic table at the same time, so i dont know what the new topic_id will be. Is there anyway of doing this?

Sorry if it didnt make much sense

Apology accepted.

Assuming we're talking about creating a new record and not a new field in the two tables ... do it multiple steps.

Insert the record into topics_table, which will be assigned a unique topic_id, which is probably set to auto increment(another assumption). Then query the topics_table by topic_id and sort desc. Take that and insert a new record into your posts_table.

HTH

oooh, cheers dude

It might be better to query using max(id) instead of returning all the rows sorted by desc. If you are using an auto-increment field for id,you can use mysql_insert_id(), which:

"mysql_insert_id() returns the ID generated for an AUTO_INCREMENT column by the previous INSERT query using the given link_identifier. If link_identifier isn't specified, the last opened link is assumed" - php.net

I'm not a big fan of auto-increment, but if you do use it, that is a very useful function


Cheers,
Keith.