Groups [ 302 ] Group information There will need to be standard information saved for each group, so that groups have meaning to other users, and if appropriate can be found through the search feature. At a minimum, we need to store the following information: • Name of the group • Creator / owner of the group: So we know who has permission to manage it • Description of the group: So users know what the group is about, in a little more detail than its name • Permission structure of the group: So that the group can be shown if appropriate, and so that it is clear if and how new members can join that group • Date the group was created: We could also store the creation date, so if one group becomes old and isn't participated in very often, a newer one may take priority in the search results This information is what would be stored in the groups table in the database. Types of groups To make the groups system exible, there need to be various types of groups available, with different permissions relating to who can have access to them. Typically, most social networks tend to provide the following options: • Global / public groups: Open to everyone on the site • Network specic: Only open to a section of the social network. For example, those from a particular geographical region, or working for one particular institution • Private, with these options: ° Only available to those who have been explicitly invited by the group's creator ° Semi-private: Only available to those who have been explicitly invited by another member of the group ° Invite-only: Private groups where users can request membership (similar to friend requests), which is then decided by the group's creator or administrator As our Dino Space network doesn't, in its current form, have any provisions for subsidiary networks, such as users based in the US or the UK, or users who work at a specic company, we will not look to implement this feature. The other types of groups seem appropriate, so we will look to implement those. Download from Wow! eBook <www.wowebook.com> Chapter 10 [ 303 ] Ownership There are a number of ways we could facilitate the ownership or management of a community group on our social network. Primarily there are two options: • The creator is the owner / administrator of the group • The creator can appoint owner / administrator(s) of the group We will implement the rst of these options. However, it shouldn't be too difcult to extend this to support appointed administrators, should you wish to extend this for your own social network. In this sense, the creator of the group will be listed on the group's page, and they alone will have full control of the group. Membership Finally, we need to plan how membership will be organized, particularly in light of the types of groups that we may support. We need to be able to store and manage membership lists, lists of invited users who can become members of protected groups should they wish, and also users who have requested to be members of a group, but have not yet been granted access. Features Groups need to offer users a dedicated area where they can communicate and collaborate on specic topics related to the purpose of the group, including discussions. A group With an idea of what our group needs to do, the information it needs to contain, and how it will work, let's now create the functionality. This, as with other features, will involve creation of a model, a controller, and a series of template les to form the view. Discussion In order to facilitate communication and collaboration, groups require some new functionality that we don't yet have in Dino Space—discussion forum style topics. Let's create models for topics and discussion forum posts. Initially, we will tie these with groups; however, it would be easy for us to extend them to other areas of the social network should we wish. Download from Wow! eBook <www.wowebook.com> Groups [ 304 ] We won't create controllers at this stage, as topics (for now) will only be accessed via groups. So either the group's controller will handle this, or the group's controller will delegate control to a group topic controller. Discussion forums can be very complicated systems; there are numerous open source and commercial forum software products available with a wealth of features. Creating a fully-featured discussion forum would be the series of a number of books in itself. For the purposes of Dino Space, we are going to create a very simple discussion-style feature to plug into our social network. Database This discussion feature will require two new database tables, one for topics themselves, and one for the posts they relate to. Topics Topic records in the database will simply contain a name, who created it and when, and the group they are related to, as illustrated by the table below: Field Type Description ID Integer, Auto-increment, Primary Key Internal reference for the topic of conversation Name Varchar The name of the topic Creator Integer The user who created the topic Created Timestamp The time the topic was created Group Integer The group the topic was created within Posts Posts will contain the content of the post, who created it and when, and the topic that it relates to, as illustrated by the table below. Field Type Description ID Integer, Auto-increment, Primary Key Internal reference for the post within a topic Topic Integer The topic the post is part of Post Longtext The post itself Creator Integer The user who created the post Created Timestamp The time the post was created Download from Wow! eBook <www.wowebook.com> Chapter 10 [ 305 ] Post When a topic is created, in most cases so is the rst post. Hence, we should link our post and topic models so that both are created at the same time. Since the topic will create the post, we should create the post model rst. Model The post model (models/post.php) only needs to be basic: various properties for the object, a constructor to get the post from the database, some setter methods to update the properties, and a save method to create a new post or update an existing post. <?php /** * Post model object */ class Post{ As usual we start with our class variables; these include a reference to the registry object itself, and the variables required for a post. /** * Registry object */ private $registry; /** * ID of the post */ private $id; /** * ID of the creator of the post */ private $creator; /** * Name of the creator of the post */ private $creatorName; /** * Timestamp of when the post was created */ private $created; Download from Wow! eBook <www.wowebook.com> Groups [ 306 ] /** * Friendly representation of when the post was created */ private $createdFriendly; /** * ID of the topic the post relates to */ private $topic; /** * The post itself */ private $post; The constructor takes the registry object as a parameter and, optionally, an ID for the post. If a post ID is supplied, then it queries the database for the post, and if a record exists, it populates the class variables with the results. /** * Post constructor * @param Registry $registry the registry object * @param int $id the ID of the post * @return void */ public function __construct( Registry $registry, $id=0 ) { $this->registry = $registry; $this->id = $id; if( $this->id > 0 ) { $sql = "SELECT p.*, DATE_FORMAT(p.created, '%D %M %Y') as created_friendly, pr.name as creator_name FROM posts p, profile pr WHERE pr.user_id=p.creator AND p.ID=" . $this->id; $this->registry->getObject('db')->executeQuery( $sql ); if( $this->registry->getObject('db')->numRows() > 0 ) { $data = $this->registry->getObject('db')->getRows(); $this->creator = $data['creator']; $this->creatorName = $data['creator_name']; $this->createdFriendly = $data['created_friendly']; $this->topic = $data['topic']; $this->post = $data['post']; } else Download from Wow! eBook <www.wowebook.com> Chapter 10 [ 307 ] { $this->id = 0; } } } We have our setter methods to set the private class variables from outside the object. /** * Set the creator of the post * @param int $c the creator * @return void */ public function setCreator( $c ) { $this->creator = $c; } /** * Set the topic the post relates to * @param int $t the topic ID * @return void */ public function setTopic( $t ) { $this->topic = $t; } /** * Set the post content * @param String $p the post itself * @return void */ public function setPost( $p ) { $this->post = $p; } Finally, we have our save method. If an ID is set, it updates an existing record; if no ID is set, then it inserts a record into the database. /** * Save the post in the database * @return void */ Download from Wow! eBook <www.wowebook.com> Groups [ 308 ] public function save() { if( $this->id > 0 ) { $update = array(); $update['topic'] = $this->topic; $update['post'] = $this->post; $update['creator'] = $this->creator; $this->registry->getObject('db')->updateRecords( 'posts', $update, 'ID=' . $this->id ); } else { $insert = array(); $insert['topic'] = $this->topic; $insert['post'] = $this->post; $insert['creator'] = $this->creator; $this->registry->getObject('db')->insertRecords( 'posts', $insert ); $this->id = $this->registry->getObject('db')->lastInsertID(); } } } ?> Topic Our topic model needs to link into the post model. So we should create a method that creates a new instance of the post model and stores it publicly within the topic model, so that our controllers can update the properties of both of these objects. When it comes to saving the topic, if the post was created, it should pass the topic ID to indicate the topic the post relates to. Model Because of what we discussed above, this model (models/topic.php) will be slightly more complicated than the post model, but not by much. <?php /** * Discussion topic class */ class Topic { Download from Wow! eBook <www.wowebook.com> Chapter 10 [ 309 ] As usual, we have various properties within the object. /** * The registry object */ private $registry; /** * ID of the topic */ private $id=0; /** * ID of the creator */ private $creator; /** * Name of the creator */ private $creatorName; /** * Name of the topic */ private $name; /** * When the topic was created (TIMESTAMP) */ private $created; /** * Friendly reference for the date the topic was created */ private $createdFriendly; Download from Wow! eBook <www.wowebook.com> Groups [ 310 ] A few of these properties are of more than just data from the topics table. We also have the numPosts property, which is for the number of posts within a topic; we have a Boolean eld, which determines if the topic should also save the rst post, and in that instance, we also have a post object. /** * Number of posts in the topic */ private $numPosts; /** * If we are also saving the first post */ private $includeFirstPost; /** * Post object - if saving the first post too */ private $post; /** * Group the topic was posted within */ private $group; We have our standard constructor, populating elds if the ID is valid. /** * Topic constructor * @param Registry $registry the registry object * @param int $id the ID of the topic * @return void */ public function __construct( Registry $registry, $id=0 ) { $this->registry = $registry; $this->id = $id; if( $this->id > 0 ) { $sql = "SELECT t.*, (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM posts po WHERE po.topic=t.ID) as posts, DATE_FORMAT(t.created, '%D %M %Y') as created_friendly, p.name as creator_name FROM topics t, profile p WHERE p.user_id=t.creator AND t.ID=" . $this->id; $this->registry->getObject('db')->executeQuery( $sql ); if( $this->registry->getObject('db')->numRows() > 0 ) Download from Wow! eBook <www.wowebook.com> Chapter 10 [ 311 ] { $data = $this->registry->getObject('db')->getRows(); $this->creator = $data['creator']; $this->creatorName = $data['creator_name']; $this->createdFriendly = $data['created_friendly']; $this->name = $data['name']; $this->numPosts = $data['posts']; $this->group = $data['group']; } else { $this->id = 0; } } } /** * Get query of the posts in the topic (i.e. collection of posts == topic ) */ public function getPostsQuery() { $sql = "SELECT p.*, DATE_FORMAT() as friendly_created_post, pr.name as creator_friendly_post FROM posts p, profile pr WHERE pr.user_id=p.creator AND p.topic=" . $this->id; return $sql; } We have a method to set if we are including the rst post. If we are, we include the class, instantiate the object, and assign it to the post property in the topic object. /** * Set if this save should also save the first post * @param bool $ifp * @return void */ public function includeFirstPost( $ifp ) { $this->includeFirstPost = $ifp; require_once( FRAMEWORK_PATH . 'models/post.php' ); $this->post = new Post( $this->registry, 0 ); } Download from Wow! eBook <www.wowebook.com> . . $this->id; $this->registry->getObject('db' )-& gt;executeQuery( $sql ); if( $this->registry->getObject('db' )-& gt;numRows() > 0 ) { $data = $this->registry->getObject('db' )-& gt;getRows(); . $this->post; $insert['creator'] = $this->creator; $this->registry->getObject('db' )-& gt;insertRecords( 'posts', $insert ); $this->id = $this->registry->getObject('db' )-& gt;lastInsertID(); . p.user_id=t.creator AND t.ID=" . $this->id; $this->registry->getObject('db' )-& gt;executeQuery( $sql ); if( $this->registry->getObject('db' )-& gt;numRows() > 0 ) Download