How To Count Read and Unread message in PHP mysql - php

Question

I want to make a read and Unread message count from Mysql.
This is my PHP code :
<?php
$dbdata = "SELECT * FROM users";
if ($result = mysqli_query($db, $dbdata)) {
if (mysqli_num_rows($result) > 0) {
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_array($result)) {
echo "<li class=online'><a href='?user=" .
$row['username'] .
"'><img alt='user pics' src='img/demo/av1.jpg' /> <span>" .
$row['fname'] . ' ' .
$row['lname'] . "</span><span class='msgcount'> 0</span></a></li>";
}
mysqli_free_result($result);
} else {
echo "No Students Found.";
}
} else {
echo "ERROR: Could not able to execute. ";
}
?>
I want <span class='msgcount'> 0</span> to display a count of the unread messages of that user. And if the user is already clicked, the messages unread becomes 0 because messages are shown upon click.
Can you help me solve this logic? I just want to notify that there is an unread message. Thank you masters please help me.
This is the Output image of the Chat Message:

Answer 1

I am new to php. So this can serve as an alternative till a better answer is tendered.
You could create a table that looks like that of your message. Then when you send a message insert the data into the two tables. Next, select your message in your normal way. And select the number of rows from your look alike table then print it in the span for unread messages. Then onclick let mysqli delete the messages from the look alike table. Autoupdate the span with jquery.

Answer 2

I'm assume that besided the users table, you alse have a messages table.
And I will boldly assume your messages table looks like this:
id int pk,
to_user_id int fk,
from_user_id int fk,
read bool default false,
title varcher(250),
body text,
created_at datetime,
updated_at datetime
So, users and messages have a 1:M relationship and rightfully so
You join, filter and count users and messages at every page load or at every few seconds
SELECT u.id, u.name as from, count(1) as total
FROM users AS u
JOIN messages AS m on u.id = m.from_user_id
WHERE
to_user_id = ? -- this is the authenticated user id!
AND `read` is false
GROUP BY from_user_id
This will give you tuples like so:
id, from, total
22, john, 1
124, frank, 3
523, bob, 1
11, david, 3
But this will require some more work, because this will only return the users with unread messages. So you can easily check if there are any messages by friends.
If you want just a general message count to show, for example on a banner:
SELECT count(1) FROM messages WHERE `read` is false and to_user_id = ? -- ? is the authenticated user id
Extra:
There are tons of fancier ways to go, like using redis to cache the message count.
What I've just describe is probably the simpler and uses zero auxiliar infrastructure, aka the burn mysql burn strategy.
pro tip:
if your application is going to rely heavily on messages like a slack type of app, it's not a good idea to store messages in a SQL database. But if you are just learning or tinkering, go ahead!

Answer 3

In your database create a column "Status" of datatype int(1) Default 0.
If I read the message update the status with 1, as by default we are using 0 that means its unread message.
Now at the time counting. Create two variables $total_read = 0 and $total_unread = 0.
Inside your while loop your can go with this
while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($result)) {
if($row['status'] == 0)
{
$total_unread = total_unread + 1
} else {
$total_read = total_read + 1
}
}