How can I make it so that, if you have a message in your inbox, which is new, then you click it (to read it obviously) and then it'll say you have no new messages (but the message will stay there, because you have only read it)..
Anyone get what I mean?
Help please

feraira,

I am not sure how this is a PHP issue. Once your send a message (and I presume you are referring to email), the behavior of that message in the INBOX becomes a function of the email client (e.g., Outlook, Thunderbird).

Nooooooooooo, you don't get me lol, like if you look at these forums, they have "7 views" or something right? I have created a messenger for my site (www.xing-designs.com) and I am trying to make it so that it only tells you that you have NEW messages (ones which haven't been read), whereas if they are old, they stay in the inbox, but not say "1 new message" if you get me?

Then in your SQL you flag it.. say u have a field that says "message_status", and simply a tinyint(1) - so a new message would be 0, old would be 1, archived would be 2 so on and so on.

Use PHP to look that up and then determine what it should do after that, simple!

Yeah I understand that I will have to create a new field in the table for it like you said, and yes a new message would be 0 and old would be 1, or vice versa.. but how would I tell the database to change that when they click it?

Use something like below, the OpenDataBase() function won't work, it my own function, but look at the second argument of the function to see the correct SQL statement. The $SetStatus is there because the StatusMail() function usually does more than simply set it to read in my scripts, and the $IDRef is the ID of the message that needs to be marked as read.

PHP Code:

function StatusMail ($SetStatus, $IDRef) {

   if ($SetStatus == 'Read') {
    
        $result = OpenDataBase("fester_db", "UPDATE EmailData SET Status = '0' WHERE IDRef = '$IDRef'");

        $result = mysql_query($result);

    } 
} 


OK, for a guy kinda newish to parts of PHP like this, how can it be done? Easily ...

The page that displays the opened message will need to update the database record you talked about earlier. Lets say that field is called 'Viewed'

you would want something like this on your message page.

PHP Code:

mysql_connect(localhost,$username,$password);

$query="UPDATE inbox SET viewed='1' WHERE message_id='$id'";
mysql_query($query);
mysql_close(); 


Then your code that displays how many new messages there are would be something like this...

PHP Code:

// Check for NEW unread messages
$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM inbox WHERE user='$user' AND viewed='0'");
$newmessages = mysql_num_rows($query);
mysql_close();
echo "You have $newmessages in your inbox"; 


you see? MySQL selects all the viewed=0 rows and counts how many rows there are. Thus telling you how many unread messages are in the inbox!

Ok thanks for the help guys, I didn't think it would be that easy lol! Thanks again guys!

See it in action: www.xing-designs.com

Heh heh, no problem.

Awesome web site by the way.