What are the advantages and disadvantages of using text fields for storing user IDs with delimiters in a mail system in PHP?

When storing user IDs with delimiters in a text field in a mail system in PHP, the advantage is that it allows for multiple user IDs to be stored in a single field. However, this approach can make it more difficult to query and retrieve individual user IDs from the field. It is recommended to use a separate table to store user IDs in a relational database, which would make it easier to manage and query the data. 

// Example of storing user IDs in a separate table in a relational database

// Connect to the database
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "mail_system";

$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
    die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}

// Create a table to store user IDs
$sql = "CREATE TABLE user_ids (
    id INT(6) UNSIGNED AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    user_id INT(6) NOT NULL
)";

if ($conn->query($sql) === TRUE) {
    echo "Table user_ids created successfully";
} else {
    echo "Error creating table: " . $conn->error;
}

// Insert user IDs into the table
$userIds = [1, 2, 3];

foreach ($userIds as $userId) {
    $sql = "INSERT INTO user_ids (user_id) VALUES ($userId)";

    if ($conn->query($sql) === TRUE) {
        echo "User ID $userId inserted successfully";
    } else {
        echo "Error inserting user ID: " . $conn->error;
    }
}

// Close the connection
$conn->close();

Keywords

text fields user IDs delimiters mail system PHP

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