Best way to display web content for specific country using mysql - php

Question

Need a big help from you.
I need an advice from all you good people out there.
I have some contents that i need to display only to few countries.I am okay with getting the user's country with Geoip.i am storing my content in MySQL database with a country_code field.country code can be empty or any single code or group of comma separated values
What i want to do is,
checking country_code and if it is empty, display that content for all users.
if country_code is not empty and only a single value,display content only for the given country_code users.
if country_code is group of comma separated values,display contents for all the comma separated country users.
i have two options for do this
adding data columns for each country separately and display contents
as for example three columns for three countries US,UK,AU and if user's location is US,
$sql=mysql_fetch_array(mysql_query("SELECT * FROM content_table WHERE US=='$country_code'"));
adding country data for single column as country_code and store US,UK,AU and if user's location is US,
$sql=mysql_fetch_array(mysql_query("SELECT * FROM content_table WHERE country_code!=''"));
$pieces = explode(",", $sql['country_code']);
foreach($pieces as $val){
if($country_code=="US")
//display content
}
NOTE:amount of countries may differs according to my needs
what will be the best practice to overcome this,
using different columns to different country make fast search but adding more columns is not good i think
using single column and iterate comma separated values needs more computation
What should i do..??
please advice me on this.. OR do you have any idea better than this..? Thanks

Answer 1

I'd just say - create a countries table
countries
id, code, name
1, UK , United Kingdom
..... and rest of the countries
In your content table just add another column country_id or country_code
Content
id, title, body, country_code
1, some text, more text, 1
then in your sql
just select * from content where country_code = 'UK' or country_id = 1 // depending on which option you go for
OR
create a separate linking table for allowing content for multiple countries
content_country
content_id, country_id
1, 2
1, 1
1, 3
To fetch content your queries use left/right/inner join e.g.
SELECT *
FROM `content` c
LEFT JOIN content_country cc ON cc.content_id = c.id
AND cc.country_id
IN ( 2, 4 )

Answer 2

$sql=mysql_fetch_array(mysql_query("SELECT *
FROM content_table
WHERE country_code = ''
OR country_code REGEXP ',?". $user_country_code .",?'"));
If I understood you well, you want to show elements to the user only if the user country code is in the country_code field or if the country_code is not specified ?
This should do it, even if a database solution would be better.

Answer 3

Try It:
$sql=mysql_fetch_array(mysql_query("SELECT * FROM content_table WHERE country_code!=''"));
$pieces = explode(",", $sql['country_code']);
# No Need to run loop
#foreach($pieces as $val)
#{
# if($country_code=="US") //display content
#}
if(!empty($pieces)) //
{
if(in_array($user_country_code,$pieces ))
{
echo "display content";
}
}
else
{
echo "display content"; // for all country
}
Use in_array() except of loop. I guess you will use in on user login so you will have user_country_code.