Help with Grocery List Database design

I want to create a Grocery List Table that will accept both the Category and the Specific Products.

For Example: I add to my grocery list:

1. Fruit (Category)
2. Fuji Apple (Product)
3. Shampoo (Category)
4. Dove Energize Shampoo (Product)

I have Product Table w/ Manufacture开发者_运维百科r(reference table), Category Table w/ SubCategoryId.

I want the user to enter either the Category or Product into the Grocery List, but have a way knowing that item entered is either a Category or Product. Please advise.

Any help is much appreciated.

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Bogdan solution is a very good solution and if i have your problem i would implement his solution, but if you insist on one column in one table for your grocery list, i guess you have to use substring

like e.g

CREATE TABLE grocery_list (
    [groceryItem] varchar(100)
);

Insert into grocery_list ([groceryItem]) values ('(c)Fruit')
Insert into grocery_list ([groceryItem]) values ('(p)Fuji Apple')
Insert into grocery_list ([groceryItem]) values ('(c)Shampoo')
Insert into grocery_list ([groceryItem]) values ('(c)Dove Energize Shampoo')

and to access your table substring the first 2 chars to check the type of your item

Select [item] = case when substring(groceryItem,2,1) = 'c' then
   right(groceryItem,len(groceryItem) - 3) +  ' (Category)'
when substring(groceryItem,2,1) = 'p' then
   right(groceryItem,len(groceryItem) - 3) +  ' (Product)'
end 
from grocery_list

This will give you the below result

**item**
Fruit (Category)
Fuji Apple (Product)
Shampoo (Category)
Dove Energize Shampoo (Category)

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I would create two separate columns, one for categories and one for products:

CREATE TABLE grocery_list (
    'category_id' INTEGER NULL FOREIGN KEY categories 'id',
    'product_id' INTEGER NULL FOREIGN KEY products 'id',
    ...
);

Entries will only put a value in one of the two columns, leaving the other as NULL. Then you can query your grocery list like this:

SELECT * FROM grocery_list, categories, products
    WHERE categories.id=grocery_list.category_id
    AND products.id=grocery_list.product_id;