How to structure the database for an e-commerce application? - php

Question

I am making an e-commerce web application. The following are the things that I have planned.
products table to contain only few columns viz. id, name, code, SKU_no.
meta_information_products table containing columns viz. id, product_id [foreign key to products table], meta_title, meta_keywords, meta_description.
measurement_product table containing columns viz. id, product_id, width, height, weight, length
And similarly other tables in relation to products.
So my questions are:
Shall I create different Model for each of the points above and
then create the One-To-One relationship with products and
related table ? Or shall I create only one Model called Product and declare all the fields in just one table product.
If I create different models for Product, what should be the name of the method to be declared for creating the One-To-One relationship, and same with Product Model.
For example, consider the following: I have created two models called Product and MetaInformationProduct and I have created relationship with both the tables. Now how do I name the method for the following:
class Product extends Model {
...
public function methodName() {
$this->belongsTo('App\Product');
}
...
}
And for MetaInformationProduct:
class MetaInformationProduct extends Model {
...
public function methodName() {
$this->hasOne('App\Product');
}
...
}

Answer 1

I guess Stack Overflow is not the best place to ask questions of this kind, since your questions do not necessarily have right or wrong answers. There are multiple possible ways to go about constructing your app's data structure, and ultimately it all boils down to one's personal style of coding. So almost every developer would have an original 'right answer' to your questions.
Here's what I think. Why do you need three separate tables for all that data? As far as I can see, all three tables contain data related one-to-one to a single product. That means more complicated models and relations in development, and more resources and longer execution time in production. You could avoid all that if you create one products table with the following columns: id, code, SKU_no, name, title, description, width, height, length, weight. That will simplify your models significantly and reduce the number of queries trifold.
Additionally, I think I can spot a piece of bad practice in your table structure. In your current meta_information_products table you have a column named meta_keywords. I'm guessing that that field would contain multiple keywords of a product. This negates the benefit of relational database structure and will give you headaches down the road. Instead, I would create one products table as I described in the previous paragraph, then another table titled keywords, with the following columns: id, keyword. Lastly, you'd need a relational table titled keyword_product with the following columns: id, keyword_id, product_id. This gives you the ability for one product to have multiple keywords, and for one keyword to be assigned to multiple products. It's a well known 'Many to many' relation, and you can read more about it in the Laravel's official documentation.
In general, you should create one model for one database table, except for the relational tables. So in case you do as I would, you would then need two models: Product and Keyword. For its content, it's best that you refer to the link in the previous paragraph.