Help needed creating a social network

Anyone have some pointers at a HowTo on creating a social network?

Basically I need to show people in your immediate network, and also friends
of your friends, etc... Like the whole 'six degrees of separation' thing.
Ala: myspace, friendster, etc. ad nauseum.

I prefer mySQL and PHP, but I could port from most any code. I guess I'm
mostly interested in the theory of this an how do I set up the tables
properly and what is the magic incantation (JOIN) to get this "chain" of
people.

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Re: Help needed creating a social network

CREATE TABLE `users` (userID int(11) not null auto_increment, primary
key(userID), name tinytext not null, email tinytext not null);

CREATE TABLE `links` (userID int(11), key (userID), friendID int(11),
key(friendID));

$friends = mysql_query("select users.name, users.userID from users left join
links on links.friendID = users.userID where links.userID =
{$_GET['userID']}");

echo "

You have friends!!

RE: Help needed creating a social network

Thanks for the reply. However, that only gives me a single degree.

I'm looking for the way to traverse a 'tree' to see who is in your extended
networks, so I can do things like:

You are 4 degrees away from Sam:

You know bob who knows john who knows carrol who knows Sam.

Sam <- carrol <- john <- bob <- you

Etc.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Micah Stevens [mailto:micah@raincross-tech.com]
> Sent: Monday, March 06, 2006 10:28 PM
> To: php-db@lists.php.net
> Subject: Re: [PHP-DB] Help needed creating a social network
>
>
> CREATE TABLE `users` (userID int(11) not null auto_increment, primary
> key(userID), name tinytext not null, email tinytext not null);
>
> CREATE TABLE `links` (userID int(11), key (userID), friendID int(11),
> key(friendID));
>
> > $friends = mysql_query("select users.name, users.userID from
> users left join
> links on links.friendID = users.userID where links.userID =
> {$_GET['userID']}");
>
> echo "

You have friends!!