[thelist] [DB Design] Recursive Directory Structure

Ken Kogler ken.kogler at curf.edu
Sat Feb 1 20:50:01 CST 2003


> show me a major site where you, as the user, can explode the entire
> tree
> [...]
> what's your favourite nested hierarchy example?

This is for an online photo gallery. I'd like to allow for the
possibility of nested photo albums:

  vacations > 2001 > prague
  vacations > 2001 > prague > castles
  vacations > 2001 > prague > st charles bridge
  vacations > 2001 > budapest

The more I think on it, the more I'm leaning towards a drill-down
approach. But it would be nice to have an "entire collection at a
glance" page somewhere with a thumbnail from each gallery (much like an
exploded site map, I guess).

And since I've now got only one page showing the exploded collection (I
love calling it "exploded" for some reason!), I won't need to muck
around with this at all, really. The whole point of emulating the file
structure in the db was that I was already making a call to the db for
album prefs/config/info/etc... Since now this page will be very limited
(nothing more than a name and thumbnail I'd imagine), I can just look at
the actual filesystem rather than try to mimic it in the db.

Amazing how much good help is available on a Saturday night... Thanks,
everyone!

> to me, it is not a technical problem, it is a question of usability
> design

That it is... It's also much easier for me to think in those terms. :)

--Ken




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