Summary: What is the most efficient way to store information similar to the like system on FB. Aka, a tally of likes is kept, the person who like it is kept etc.
It needs to be associated with a user id so as to know who liked it. The issue is, do you have a column that has a comma delimited list of the id of things that were liked, or do you have a separate column for each like (way too many columns). The info that's stored would be a boolean value (1/0) but needs to be associated with the user as well as the "page" that was liked.
My thought was this:
Column name = likes eg.:
1,2,3,4,5
Aka, the user has "like" the pages that have an id of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. To calculate total "likes" a tally would need to be taken and then stored in a database associated with the pages themselves (table already exists).
That seems the best way to me but is there a better option that anyone can think of?
P.S. I'm not doing FB likes but it's the easiest explanation.
EDIT: Similar idea to the plus/neg here on stackoverflow.