Coding Contest III: Let's Make a Deal

BuzzLY

Well, it's time to start the third contest finally. Sorry it took so long to get it off the ground.

Task: Create a guestbook application.

Goal: Create a functioning guestbook application with the restrictions as outlined below. Violating any restriction will render your entry ineligible to win. Follow them closely.

Restrictions: There are quite a few of them, so heed them well.

All code must be in PHP, version 4.3.x. HTML is allowed of course, but only PHP will be judged. Javascript is NOT allowed, and you will not access any external databases.
Code must be self-contained in ONE php file, called guestbk.php. Data is to be saved in one external text file. That data can be formatted any way you want, but it must be called guestbk.dat, and it must be a text file. This file should be created the first time the program is run.
You must capture the following data:
- Person's name (required)
  - email address (not required)
  - date/time (required) (When displaying the guestbook,
    date must be in this format: August 7, 2003 (Thurs)
  - comment (not required)
Form must post to itself to save the data. The form must also be used to display current guestbook entries.
Now the fun part 🙂 You may not use any of the following:
- if()
  - for()
  - nl2br()
You MUST, however, use each of these at least once:
- die()
  - function()
  - define() -- must be a valid constant used in your code
Program must run with no errors or notices; "error_reporting(E_ALL);" MUST be one of the first commands of your script.

That's it! Entries should be entered here by attaching a .zip or .txt file to your reply. I will extract or rename your file and run it on my server to test it out.

I will judge entries based on compliance with the above restrictions, cleanliness of code, documentation of your code, speed of execution, and look of the app in the browser as a tiebreaker. Size of the app is not a judging criteria.

Good Luck!

Contest Home Page
[FONT=courier new]Current Entries (in order of submission only):

goldbug: . . . data . . . code . . . guestbook
bad76: . . . . data . . . code . . . guestbook
jeb: . . . . . data . . . code . . . guestbook
drawmack:. . . data . . . code . . . guestbook . . . extra
benkillin: . . data . . . code . . . guestbook
[/FONT]

Moonglobe

well this is a toughy, but ill get on it ASAP.... i didnt get around to joining in the other ones........... but one question, can the function be something like this?

function foo($n)
{
    return sin($n);
}

BuzzLY

As long as it's a functional part of the app, and you use it, sure. Remember, though, that there are going to be other people entering this thing, so you'll get bonus points if your code is clever. I'm sure you can come up with a better function than that!

Moonglobe

or are you? you've never seen much 'moonglobe' code 😃

planetsim

BuzzLY will you be taking part in this?

goldbug

Alright, here's my first draft at it.

It's 3AM, I did it in a hurry, I know the code isn't the greatest, and it's probably overloaded with switches and errors. Meh. I actually participated, and isn't that what counts? 🙂

Note: this submission requires the XML (expat) extension to be functioning on the server.

BuzzLY

That was fast. A reminder to everyone that you must be sure to follow all of the restrictions if you want to win. Ahem. Even #7... ahem. You may also feel free to change your entries until the contest is over (AHEM!) -- and that will be when it seems all entries are forthcoming, or Aug 31, whichever comes first.

Current entries can be found in the first post of this thread.

piersk

Buzz, how about posting a link to the .dat file as well, so we can have a look at that.

BuzzLY

Sheesh... you're just not happy, are ya??? :rolleyes:

😃

No problem 🙂

goldbug

Wow, I musta been really tired....

Buzz: yeah, I knew that it didn't save the entered data if there was an error. I was tired, and figured, if I can't have my if() statements, the user can't have their old data. 🙂

Also, another bug I knew about but actually forgot to fix:
If you use newlines in your comments, they dont actually translate into the output (but they're there in the dat file). Thats due to the way I had the CDATA handler trim the input before displaying -- you either get no carriage returns, or alot of extra spaces (shows white space like indenting of the xml tags for example). Had every intention of fixing that, but just forgot 🙂

Oh yeah, pt #7... I've got E_ALL set on my server, so I didn't bother in the file 🙂

goldbug

Alright... just for completeness' sake.... I've made the changes a few people mentioned, as well as some minor markup formatting tweaks. Also, fixed the "newline" bug in the comments.

piersk

Merve, you haven't missed out. I for one haven't entered yet (might not tho).

BuzzLY

Merve, I just started this contest. Write your entry and submit it. You have until the end of this month.

goldbug

Alright, just because I'm bored, I went and made a DTD for the .dat file my guestbook uses.

For reference, here it is:

<!ELEMENT guestbook (entry)>

<!ELEMENT entry (email|comment)>
<!ATTLIST entry name CDATA #REQUIRED >
<!ATTLIST entry timestamp CDATA #REQUIRED >

<!ELEMENT email (#PCDATA)>

<!ELEMENT comment (#PCDATA)>

Merve

Okay, cool, I might enter, you never know, but are we judged on how it looks? Also, are we allowed to use elseif() or else? Are we allowed to use other sorts of loops?

BuzzLY

A small part will be the appearance... but really only if you tie with someone on all other aspects.

bad76

I'm sorry for you guys,
but today i've eated spinachs 😃

Look this and cry 🙂 🙂 🙂

Do also image submit (but saved as text... is valid :p)

Yes!

bye bye

[edit]
no,no, i'm joke...
one other debug moment...
[/edit]

bad76

ok, i'm back.
😃

[edit]
... it's keyboard, not me...
... debugged this time...
... it's last...
[/edit]

Jeb_

Alright, here's my submission.

I'll try and optimize it as much as possible over the next week or so.

[EDIT]
New version. See my post below. Damn you vBulletin.
[/EDIT]

BuzzLY

not bad, Jeb... but don't be surprised if the link I supply doesn't work for the .dat file 😉 Make sure you read ALL of the restrictions (ahem 2 ahem).

If anyone that has submitted a guestbook wants to update their file, just edit your post where you submitted it, and reattach the newest file. Then, PM me to let me know, and I'll upload it to my server.