I have an android/desktop application that I\'m now releasing on the web, and as

Question

I have an android/desktop application that I'm now releasing on the web, and as there are some social aspects I thought of adding a chat-service so users can IM as well. For this chat service, I want people to have "Online, Offline, Busy and Away" as possible status.

I currently have a table in my database named "users", which has their username/password/mail etc, all the usual stuff. Now I was wondering whether I need to save the status of the user here as well?

If not: How do I best store a users status? (Keeping in mind others need to see this ofcourse)

If yes: What's the best way to go about this? I thought I would store it as an integer (e.g, 1==offline, 2==online, 3==away and 4==busy). Saving it as text would just be a waste of space?

(By the way, it's an RDBMS, if that matters :) )

Explanation / Answer

... table in my database named "users", which has their username/password/mail etc,
Of course you mean that you're storing the "hashed" or similarly calculated value derived from the user's chosen password.

How do I best store a users status?
I would go with an Integer value in the users record, which is a foreign key to a (tiny, little) look-up table of users_statuses:

status_id Description
1 Offline
2 Online
3 Away
4 Busy
That way, when you want to add ...

37 Lost in the Bermuda Triangle
... it's just another row in a table; no code changes; no database schema changes; easy.

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