Pretty simple diagram..

My question is around the fields "liked" and "following" in the joining table.

Before I do a write to this table I'm going to need to check a record doesn't already exist.

EG a person could "like" the project, then decide to "follow" it or vice-versa.

I can do that easily enough in my code, my question is what is the best method to use here?

Should I split the "like" and "following" into separate tables instead?

Thanks for any input

what would the advantage of that be?

The only advantage I can see is not having to check if a record exists before insertion.

So I could "follow" a project which gives me a record. Then later in life I decide to "like" it I'll need to check that a record doesn't already exist, if it does, I'll need to update the row, if not I can just insert.

If they were split into separate tables I wouldn't need to "pre-check".

Seems to me I should just leave it as it is and let my application figure it out.

Just wanted to check with people who know more about databases than I..

don't sell yourself short, because your reasons for splitting are actually really good -- the code is simpler because the data is in a higher normal form (5NF or 6NF, i forget which) and yet you understood it intuitively

I've gone through and modified structure and models for this, works sweet. Thanks for your input, really appreciate it