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Hi, I have a architecture decision to make. In my head I have two ideas on how to store settings/parameters in the database. An example for one of those settings is a treshold in days for the next device maintenance.
I would like to access the settings with a helper class like so
SettingsHelper::get('moduleName', 'settingKey', 'default');
My ideas:
key and a value field. The value field has the json type and is not nullable.key and multiple columns for different datatypes which are automatically casted. As example for the columns: string_value and date_value. Those fields are nullable.
If I would use this approach I need to define somewhere which setting uses which datatype (a datatype mapping) or I could just specify the datatype in the call for the get method.Which approach is better and why?
Best regards
Which ever way you go, I would not store anything as json. Yes it's become popular, but it easily becomes a mess working with the data.
The only thing I would store is maybe a short checkbox array.
A table with a related table if necessary would be my suggestion.
Also see:
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@jlrdw Would you also not recommend json if the json string would look like this:
{
"value": "test"
}
or like this:
{
"value": ["entry1", "entry2"]
}
Laravel could cast those properties automatically, right?
I think the settings are not that big and I would only store one value per setting entry.
@Basti0208 If you can avoid using json columns, you should. They are in my opinion a very bad practice. I suggest that you read this https://tray2.se/posts/database-design
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