What would be considered the best practise when it comes to storing datatypes to the database?
For instance, you have a support ticket feature in which a ticket can have the following statuses: open, closed, review.
Would you store it as a string?
+----+----------------+--------+
| id | ticket | status |
+----+----------------+--------+
| 1 | example ticket | open |
| 2 | example ticket | closed |
+----+----------------+--------+
Store the value as an integer, so: 1 => open, 2 => closed and 3 => review or as a string.
+----+--------+
| id | status |
+----+--------+
| 1 | 1 |
| 2 | 2 |
+----+--------+
If you would save it as an integer, would you create an extra table to resolve the name of that status (lets say support_ticket_states table)?
+----+----------------+--------+
| id | ticket | status |
+----+----------------+--------+
| 1 | example ticket | 1 |
| 2 | example ticket | 2 |
+----+----------------+--------+
Or would you do that on the client side, for example:
if ($ticket->status == 1) {
echo 'Open';
}
What would be considered the best option?
via Melvin Koopmans
