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How to pivot a MySQL entity-attribute-value schema

Asked 2009-03-16T09:58:21.257
28

I need to design tables which stores all the metadata of files (i.e., file name, author, title, date created), and custom metadata (which has been added to files by users, e.g. CustUseBy, CustSendBy). The number of custom metadata fields cannot be set beforehand. Indeed, the only way of determining what and how many custom tags have been added on files is to examine what exists in the tables.

To store this, I have created a base table (having all common metadata of files), an Attributes table (holding additional, optional attributes that may be set on files) and a FileAttributes table (which assigns a value to an attribute for a file).

CREAT TABLE FileBase (
    id VARCHAR(32) PRIMARY KEY,
    name VARCHAR(255) UNIQUE NOT NULL,
    title VARCHAR(255),
    author VARCHAR(255),
    created DATETIME NOT NULL,
) Engine=InnoDB;

CREATE TABLE Attributes (
    id VARCHAR(32) PRIMARY KEY,
    name VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    type VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL
) Engine=InnoDB;

CREATE TABLE FileAttributes (
    sNo INT UNSIGNED PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT,
    fileId VARCHAR(32) NOT NULL,
    attributeId VARCHAR(32) NOT NULL,
    attributeValue VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    FOREIGN KEY fileId REFERENCES FileBase (id),
    FOREIGN KEY attributeId REFERENCES Attributes (id)
 ) Engine=InnoDB;

Sample data: 

INSERT INTO FileBase
(id,      title,  author,  name,        created)
  VALUES
('F001', 'Dox',   'vinay', 'story.dox', '2009/01/02 15:04:05'),
('F002', 'Excel', 'Ajay',  'data.xls',  '2009/02/03 01:02:03');

INSERT INTO Attributes
(id,      name,            type)
  VALUES
('A001', 'CustomeAttt1',  'Varchar(40)'),
('A002', 'CustomUseDate', 'Datetime');

INSERT INTO FileAttributes 
(fileId, attributeId, attributeValue)
  VALUES
('F001', 'A001',      'Akash'),
('F001', 'A002',      '2009/03/02');

Now the problem is I want to show the data in a manner like this:

FileId, Ti
mysql database-design pivot entity-attribute-value
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2 Answers

10

If you're looking for something more usable (and joinable) than a group-concat result, try this solution below. I've created some tables very similar to your example to make this make sense.

This works when:

  • You want a pure SQL solution (no code, no loops)
  • You have a predictable set of attributes (e.g. not dynamic)
  • You are OK updating the query when new attribute types need to be added
  • You would prefer a result that can be JOINed to, UNIONed, or nested as a subselect

Table A (Files)

FileID, Title, Author, CreatedOn

Table B (Attributes)

AttrID, AttrName, AttrType [not sure how you use type...]

Table C (Files_Attributes)

FileID, AttrID, AttrValue

A traditional query would pull many redundant rows:

SELECT * FROM 
Files F 
LEFT JOIN Files_Attributes FA USING (FileID)
LEFT JOIN Attributes A USING (AttributeID);

AttrID  FileID  Title           Author  CreatedOn   AttrValue   AttrName    AttrType
50      1       TestFile        Joe     2011-01-01  true        ReadOnly        bool
60      1       TestFile        Joe     2011-01-01  xls         FileFormat      text
70      1       TestFile        Joe     2011-01-01  false       Private         bool
80      1       TestFile        Joe     2011-01-01  2011-10-03  LastModified    date
60      2       LongNovel       Mary    2011-02-01  json        FileFormat      text
80      2       LongNovel       Mary    2011-02-01  2011-10-04  LastModified    date
70      2       LongNovel       Mary    2011-02-01  true        Private         bool
50      2       LongNovel       Mary    2011-02-01  true        ReadOnly        bool
50      3       ShortStory      Susan   2011-03-01  false       ReadOnly        bool
60      3       ShortStory      Susan   2011-03-01  ascii       FileFormat
answered 2011-10-27T19:00:18.610
4

I have been experimenting with the different answers and Methai's answer was the most convenient for me. My current project, although it does uses Doctrine with MySQL, has quite a few loose tables.

The following is the result of my experience with Methai's solution:

create entity table

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS entity;
CREATE TABLE entity (
    id INT UNSIGNED PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT,
    title VARCHAR(255),
    author VARCHAR(255),
    createdOn DATETIME NOT NULL
) Engine = InnoDB;

create attribute table

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS attribute;
CREATE TABLE attribute (
    id INT UNSIGNED PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT,
    name VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    type VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL
) Engine = InnoDB;

create attributevalue table

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS attributevalue;
CREATE TABLE attributevalue (
    id INT UNSIGNED PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT,
    value VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    attribute_id INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL,
    FOREIGN KEY(attribute_id) REFERENCES attribute(id)
 ) Engine = InnoDB;

create entity_attributevalue join table

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS entity_attributevalue;
CREATE TABLE entity_attributevalue (
    entity_id INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL,
    attributevalue_id INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL,
    FOREIGN KEY(entity_id) REFERENCES entity(id),
    FOREIGN KEY(attributevalue_id) REFERENCES attributevalue(id)
) Engine = InnoDB;

populate entity table

INSERT INTO entity
    (title, author, createdOn)
VALUES
    ('TestFile', 'Joe', '2011-01-01'),
    ('LongNovel', 'Mary', '2011-02-01'),
    ('ShortStory', 'Susan', '2011-03-01'),
    ('ProfitLoss', 'Bill', '2011-04-01'),
    ('MonthlyBudget', 'George', '2011-05-01'),
    ('Paper', 'Jane', '2012-04-01'),
    ('Essay', 'John', '2012-03-01'),
    ('Article', 'Dan', '2012-12-01');
answered 2013-02-28T16:53:35.427

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