should i use php?

jbachris

i have a rating system i developed nearly 10 years ago that rates college football teams based on their on-field performance.

currently i'm using excel and visual basic to update the ratings and just posting them plain text.

i want to move away from plain text and list them and have the teams in the ratings be a link to their schedule, etc.

my rating system isn't super complex, it basically takes the outcome of the game (won or lost) and uses that with both teams' rating entering the game and uses a linear equation to determine a new rating.

would it be wise/okay to use php for this, or should i have a friend code something up in like c, or something and just have him format the output into something i could dump into a mysql db?

maxpup979

heh- use PHP. Granted, I am a PHP developer, so I may be a bit biased, but you are talking about something that is right in the wheelhouse for PHP.

jbachris

maxpup979 wrote:
heh- use PHP. Granted, I am a PHP developer, so I may be a bit biased, but you are talking about something that is right in the wheelhouse for PHP.

Thanks, now how to structure things 🙂

dougal85

PHP is ideal for this but depending on your VB experience using ASP or ASP.NET may be a more natural progression. Since in these cases you can program with visual basic.

The next best step would be to clearly define what exactly you want to do.

jbachris

I wrote this code real quick, trying to get it to just at least update the games played and the games won or lost. For some reason it isn't inserting into the db.

My database structure is:

table TEAM
teamID (primary key)
team_name
team_w (default 0)
team_l (default 0)
team_gp (default 0)

table GAME
gameID (primary key)
game_home (fk, int)
game_home_score
game_away (fk, int)
game_away_score
game_date

<?

require ( "dbconnect.php" );

$games_rs = $conn->Execute ( "SELECT * FROM game ORDER BY game_date DESC" ) or die ( $conn->ErrorMsg() );

while ( ! $games_rs->EOF ) {

$team1_rs = $conn->Execute ( "SELECT * FROM team, game WHERE game_home = teamID AND gameID = " . $games_rs->Fields("gameID") . " ORDER BY game_date DESC" ) or die ( $conn->ErrorMsg() );
$team_rated = $team1_rs->Fields("game_home");
$team_win = $team1_rs->Fields("team_w");
$team_loss = $team1_rs->Fields("team_l");
$team_gp = $team1_rs->Fields("team_gp");

if ( $games_rs->Fields("game_home_score") > $games_rs->Fields("game_away_score") )  {
	$new_gp = $team_gp + 1;
	$new_win = $team_w + 1;
	$new_loss = $team_l + 0;
} 

if ( $games_rs->Fields("game_home_score") < $games_rs->Fields("game_away_score") )  {
	$new_gp = $team_gp + 1;
	$new_win = $team_w + 0;
	$new_loss = $team_l + 1;
}


$sql = "UPDATE team SET team_gp = '$new_gp', team_w = '$new_win', team_l = '$new_loss' WHERE teamID = '$team_rated'";
$add_rating_rs = $conn->Execute($sql) or die ( $conn->ErrorMsg() );

$games_rs->MoveNext(); } ?>