Graphical rating system

kidsleep

I'm looking to create a 5 star rating system similar to the one on netflix but using GD. This is what I'm looking for:

If a movie has a 2.5 out of 5, then two stars would be filled completely gold and one would be filled gold half way. The other two stars would be completely white.

Could this be done in GD? I've done bar graphs using percentages before, but never a star pattern. Would it take some mad mr. wizard-type math skills? Or would my best bet be to use pre-made pictures?

Any help would be appreciated.

tekky

premade would be the easiest... solid star, empty star and half empty star.... and then concatenate multiple copies to get 5 of whatever you need

terfle

using GD for that might be a bit overkill for that project. Try creating three images: empty star, half star and full star and create a PHP function to display the different permutations.

terfle

crap, you beat me to it. guess I write to slow 🙁

Drakla

You could do it with gd, but unless it's just for a sense of personal satisfaction or programming gains I'd honestly stick with the premade stars all the way, as you'll reduce server processing, the user will have cached the images, etc.

Even if you're doing an average that might get things a score of 3.64 and you want a star to approximate that, about 6 levels of fill would be more than enough, as I'm sure no crazy mad pixel squinter would ever notice.

kidsleep

Thanks for the input guys, I'll go with the premade now, but the GD idea does intrigue me...