PHP Module Development

SFDonovan

I am starting a new page in a php module for my PHPNuke site. The module is called MILPACS which stands for Military Personnel and Classification System. It can be seen here: http://www.3rd-infantry-division.net/modules.php?name=MILPACS

As you can see it has some functionality to it, but what it doesn't have is a way to track attendance records of troops who show up for drills twice a week.

I want a place where an admin can post the content of a drill. What we did, who attended, the date of the drill. I want to be able to track attendance records for a 4 month span and see who reaches a 60% attendance record. If they do they are authorized to wear our Exemplary Attendance medal, since in a 4 month span we would have 32 drills and they must attend 19 of these to qualify.

I could probably think of more functions for this page to do but this is a start.

Variables so far is:
@drill_count - initialized to 32

So far the table is called roster_drills and the fields are:

uniqueid (int) - for all the members of the clan
drill_id (int)
drill_dt (date)
drill_total (int) - accumulate total per member
drill_post (text) - content of what we did at drills

This is just a rough draft so if anybody has some good ideas for me to get started, or see anything I will need to do please let me know. I am learning PHP as I go...

😃

jdaggs

The information your wanting to track implies a slightly more complex database design. This could be a little overkill for now, but if you add anything other features as you implied might happen, this design may help you tremendously.

Table 1

tablename: Drills
This table describes the drills involved.

DrillID int
Drillname varchar(64) -- this is optional
DrillDate date --Am I mixing my SQL Dialects here?
DrillPost varchar(255) -- Is this column large enough?

Table 2

tablename: Roster
This table describes the People involved

RosterID int
Name varchar(64)
Rank varchar(64)
etc, etc

Table 3

tablename: Attendance
This table maps which person attended which drill.

DrillID int
RosterID int

Two important points about this design. First, although a little more complex than your original design it is what some call a 'normalized' design. Normalization is an important characteristic of good database design and helps prevent you from painting yourself into a corner when it comes to adding additional functcionality. Second, you can always choose to completely disregard it 🙂