need advice!

[itworks]

i have a site to build for a cinema theatre.

ok, so the thing is that it must have a online ticket reservation (not sale).

for the script i think i can manage myself but the problem is that i can't figure how it's the best way to do it, in terms of organization, see, it becomes a problem when i start thinking that people will be able to select which seats they want to reserve but what if those tickets are being sold at the same time in the theatre.

anyone who want to post his/her possible solutions or problems will be wellcome, i would really appretiate a debate on this script schema.

thanks in advance. 🙂

[volleytotal_ch]

i guess you have to check if the selected seat is still avaiable when the user submits his reservation. If it isn't avaible anymore, send him back to select an other seat and display a message that this seat has been reserved while choosing. Otherwise (seat still free) reservate it and redirect him to the confirmation screen.

It's best to update all choosen seats at ONCE and check with the mysql_affected_rows()-function if all seats status where changed.

[stolzyboy]

therein lies the problem, you would have to have your web reservation software tie into somehow with the cinemas current database reservation system, without knowing exactly what or how what operates, i wouldn't be able to help you any further, but for example, if they only take phone reservations and the person on the phone types it into the current system, and then that record is put into the database, your web software would have to be able to do the same thing the phone reservation person would be doing.....catch my drift???

[echo]

At the point where someone confirms they want to book, you query your database to see if the resource is still available and then book it if available. The time between these operations is close enough to be simultainius.
I'd use flash to give a front end.

[itworks]

thanks a lot for those quick replies.

you understood my problem right stolzyboy, the problem is the site's database being tied up close with the cinema's software for selling tickets, i don't think i can do that kind of connection to begin with.

i was thinking in putting some limits to this online reservation thing like:

1-people can only reserve seats in a specific area.

2-people can only make online reservations 'till a specific hour (the hour the box office of the theatre opens, that way the people down at the theatre can see what reservations have been made so they won't sell those tickets).

the problem comes to ticket selling for other dates and reservations for other dates, like buing/reserving a ticket for tomorrow.

what do you think?

[stolzyboy]

boy, i guess i don't see a very easy solution to your problem, unless you can convince them to convert the current reservation system to all on a webserver, they can have it in house and such, and then ditch the old way, and when a person calls in, the phone reserver could pull up the webserver and reserve that way, then it would be as if they themselves were on the site, which they are, and reserving, this way you can pretty much be assured that there won't be double bookings, but good luck i have tried to convince hotels to drop their old ways and go to the web and they didn't like the idea, GOOD LUCK on your journey

[itworks]

i think i might have a solution to the problem, it only have some little cons but i think i can convince them to do it this way.

for the system to work properly it must have some conditions.

1-there must be an area for online reservation only. (tickets in this area can only be sold after the online reservation is closed).

2-the online reservations can only be done 'till the time the box office opens on that days session (at this time the theatre people will see the online reservations that were made, reserve those tickets and sell the ones that were not reserved on that specific area).

this preatty much solves the problem don't you think?

[stolzyboy]

yeah that should work, not a bad idea, but they may kinda hinder away from that idea of only being able to reserve online at certain time, but otherwise should solve the problem