[Resolved] One-time code...

[mscreashuns]

Sorry if this is confusing, but here is my story. I make machinima movies and I am starting a new series. I would like for people to be able to sign up at the website, (I can take care of this), and then when an episode is released, they would each be emailed a different code to use to watch the movie before anyone else. Also, each code would only work once, meaning they couldn't share it with friends so they could watch it before it's released to the public too.

Basically all I would want is a form that is something like this:

---

Code: This is a text box

SUBMIT

And when they pushed submit, it would check to see if the code was right, and then mark it (for lack of better term) so if someone else entered the code, they would get an error. Also, if they put in a code that is wrong, they would get the error page.

I have like 3 MYSQL databases so if that's needed, that's fine. I would give you a little bit of code but I really don't know where to start. 😕

Can someone help?

[bradgrafelman]

So create a random code and store it in a table. Once the code is used, remove it from the DB so it can't be used again.

Generate the code:

function get_random_code() {

$num = "";
mt_srand((double)microtime() * 1000000);

while(strlen($num) <= 10) $num .= (string)(mt_rand(0,9));

return md5($num);

}

Store it in your database (I assume you know how to a simple INSERT query).

Check if it's valid (once again, a simple SELECT statement and seeing whether [man]mysql_num_rows/man returns 0, meaning invalid code, or not).

If it is valid, proceed to do the desired action, and use a simple DELETE FROM query to delete the code out of the database.

All of this could be accomplished using the random code generated I provided above and a MySQL table with 1 column which contains a valid code per row.

[mscreashuns]

Okay, thanks. 😉