DEV Community

Cover image for Notification data model
Jacer Omri
Jacer Omri

Posted on

Notification data model

I'm writing this post hoping to start a discussion about a good database model (Relational primarily) to serve most of the use-cases that require storing notifications in the database.
By notification, I mean something like "John commented on your post" or "Doe likes your profile".

I have been using polymorphism for the notification source and notification destination. I would use sometimes a JSON column to store arbitrary data, but I really hate it and would like to improve my methods.

Here are some points to discuss:

  • How to store notification source?
  • How to handle different notification types?
  • Notification messages?
  • Status?
  • Should a single notification instance be linked to multiple destinations or just duplicate for each destination?
  • What is an efficient query to list and paginate notifications when a user has different roles?

Cover image credit: https://www.kindpng.com/

Top comments (0)