User attributes values in db table - 20 joins?

I have a dating site where each user has own profile with more than 20 attributes like age, gender, hobbies etc. For this I have table user_profile where all attributes are in 1 row.

For searching and match calculator, it would be probably better to have attributes values in int, better than having it in varchar. But now I am not sure how to print all attributes names if name is not also a value.

So I was thinking to create two tables:

user_profile
user_id | gendre | like_pets | drinks | body_type | eyes | hair_color | ...
1       | 1      | 3         | 2      | 4         |  5   | 5          | ...
2       | 2      | 4         | 2      | 3         |  3   | 5          | ...
user_attributes
id | attr_group | value_name | attr_value
1  | 1          | male      | 1
2  | 1          | famale    | 2
3  | 2          | Like pets | 1
4  | 2          | Have pets | 2
5  | 2          | Don't like pets | 3
6  | 3          | Blue      | 1
7  | 3          | Gray      | 2
8  | 3          | Green     | 3
9  | 3          | Brown     | 4

But that means I need to create 20 queries to print all value names for all attributes. For example to print eyes color I would need
SELECT * FROM user_attributes WHERE attr_group=3
then again the same for gender, and for each other attribute. Or I can use joins, but I would need 20 joins in 1 query. Is that a correct way?

three tables

  1. users
  2. attributes
  3. user_attributes

table three has userid, attributeid and has a new row for each attribute a user has.

tnx, it makes sense :slight_smile: