Denoting multi-dimensional array data in relational database table? - database

Question

Say I have an object-like data record like this:
$article = array(
'title' => '',
'tagline' => '',
'content' => '',
'stats' => array(
'words' => 0,
'paragraphs' => 0,
'tables' => 0
),
'references' => array(
'reference 1',
'reference 2',
'reference 3'
),
'attachments' => array(
'images' => array(
'image 1',
'image s'
),
'videos' => array(
'video 1',
'video 2'
)
)
);
My question is how can I store this array of data record in relational database? How should I design the table structure?
I know I can always set up flat fields such as stats_words, stats_paragraphs, and so forth but is there any more structural ways? Instead of storing a JSON or serialized string in a single field....
Thanks!

Answer 1

For example this way:
article
ID
title _
tagline _
content ___
stat_words
stat_paragraphs
stat_tables
article_reference
ID
article_id -> article
reference _
article_attachment
ID
article_id -> article
att_type // image or video
path _
title _
(_ means varchar/text fields, other fields are numbers)
Or as MySQL DDL:
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS article (
id INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
title VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
tagline VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
content MEDIUMTEXT NOT NULL,
stat_words INT NOT NULL,
stat_paragraphs INT NOT NULL,
stat_tables INT NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY ( id )
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS article_reference (
id INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
article_id INT NOT NULL,
reference VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY ( id ),
FOREIGN KEY ( article_id ) REFERENCES article( id )
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS article_attachment (
id INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
article_id INT NOT NULL,
att_type INT NOT NULL,
path VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
title VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY ( id ),
FOREIGN KEY ( article_id ) REFERENCES article( id )
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 AUTO_INCREMENT=1;