Database design for email messaging system

Question

I want to make an email messaging system like gmail have. I would like to have following option: Starred, Trash, Spam, Draft, Read, Unread. Right now I have the below following

Answer 1

You could create a table for MessageContacts which joins each message to the people who have it in their mailboxes. When a user deletes a message then a row gets deleted from MessageContacts but the original message is preserved.

You could do that... but I suggest you don't. Unless it's an academic exercise set by your tutor then it is surely a complete waste of time to develop your own messaging system. If it is homework then you ought to say so. If not, then go do something more useful instead.

Answer 2

WHY DELETE? I think there is no need to delete anything. Just hide it, from users when deleted. Because, it will problem to check both sides, when sender send same message to many recipients. Then you have to check and flag all recipients. If all OK, then delete... I think there is no need to delete anything.

Answer 3

You need to split your table for it. You could have following schema and structure

CREATE TABLE [Users]
    (
      [UserID] INT ,
      [UserName] NVARCHAR(50) ,
      [FirstName] NVARCHAR(50) ,
      [LastName] NVARCHAR(50)
    )

CREATE TABLE [Messages]
    (
      [MessageID] INT ,
      [Subject] NVARCHAR(MAX) ,
      [Body] NVARCHAR(MAX) ,
      [Date] DATETIME,
      [AuthorID] INT,
    )

CREATE TABLE [MessagePlaceHolders]
    (
      [PlaceHolderID] INT ,
      [PlaceHolder] NVARCHAR(255)--For example: InBox, SentItems, Draft, Trash, Spam 
    )

CREATE TABLE [Users_Messages_Mapped]
    (
      [MessageID] INT ,
      [UserID] INT ,
      [PlaceHolderID] INT,
      [IsRead] BIT ,
      [IsStarred] BIT 

    )

In users table you can have users."Messages" denotes the table for messages. "MessagePlaceHolders" denotes the table for placeholders for messages. Placeholders can be inbox, sent item, draft, spam or trash. "Users_Messages_Mapped" denotes the mapping table for users and messages. The "UserID" and "PlaceHolderID" are the foreign keys."IsRead" and "IsStarred" signifies what their name stands for. If there is no record found for a particular messageid in "Users_Messages_Mapped" table that record will be deleted from Messages table since we no longer need it.

Answer 4

I think you need to decompose your schema some more. Store emails seperately, and map inboxes to the messages they contain.

Answer 5

A message can only be in one folder at a time, so you want a folders table (containing folders 'Trash', 'Inbox', 'Archive', etc.) and a foreign key from messages to folders. For labels, you have a many-to-many relation, so you need a labels table and also a link table (messages_labels). For starring, a simple bit column should do, same for 'unread'.

Answer 6

in my structure, I set "deleted: bool" flag and depend on its value show message or hide.