How should I go about this?

krekc

Im a total noob but Im willing to learn php and I think this can be done in php. Here's the issue.

Im a high school volleyball coach, I do athletic testing at the start of tryouts and we rank the kids on how they do. We have various stats for them, Height, Reach, Jump Reach, Vertical, 20 yd dash, Jump Rope, Triple Hop, Push Ups, and Sit Ups.

They get ranked in each category 1 being the best and so on. The higher they rank the less points they ultimately get so having a ton of points isnt really that good. Lower amount of points the better.

I have an excel sheet that does the ranking for me and it has all the formulas. I would love to be able to put this on our website in some fashion. Say, you pull down a girls name from a list, select the year they tried out and it pulls up their ranks and stats.

How should I go about this. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

mikell

The simplest way I can think of would be to store the info for each student in a csv (comma separated values) file:

Studen_ID, Year, First_Name, Last_name, Height, Reach, Vertical...etc
456874909, 2007, John, Doe, 6, 72, 28...etc
...etc

Accessing data in a csv file will be much easier for you if you are a beginner. Of course updating it might be kinda tedious unless you can export the data from Excel easily. If not, you can always read the Excel file with PHP, but its more complicated in my opinion.

Another idea would be to store the data in a mysql database and just stop using excel altogether. You could write an app using PHP/MySQL to let you input a students info, calculate their ranking and store it in the database. That's the way I would do it, but the learning curve will be a little steeper. Good luck!

krekc

mikell;10878696 wrote:
Another idea would be to store the data in a mysql database and just stop using excel altogether. You could write an app using PHP/MySQL to let you input a students info, calculate their ranking and store it in the database. That's the way I would do it, but the learning curve will be a little steeper. Good luck!

This is an excellent idea. How would I start this? Thanks!

mikell

A good start would be learning the basics of PHP and MySQL. A good book I would recommend is "PHP and MySQL Web Development (3rd Edition)", which covers probably about 95% of everything you would need to know, assuming you have some basic knowledge of how websites work...like if you don't even know html or how to get a simple "coming soon" page up, then you should probably start with something really simple just to get the idea of how the process in general works. If you know someone that can sit down with you and explain it all in person, that would be your best bet cause it could take a while to figure out on your own.

If you don't have your own server with mysql / php already installed, and haven't the vaguest idea how to set one up, you're best bet is paying a small price for virtual hosting. 1and1.com is a pretty reliable hosting company. Click Linux Hosting and then choose the "1&1 Beginner" package which is only $1.99 a month and comes with a MySQL database, PHP, FTP access and everything else you will need. You can also register a domain name here if you want.

One more thing...stay away from the software they offer, like "Website Builder" and "1 & 1 Form Builder"... etc that all try to make things "easier" and more "friendly". All you need is ftp access and a simple text editor...preferably one that has syntax highlighting, such as crimson editor or notepad2. In my opinion, its easier to learn when you do everything by hand, rather than relying on 3rd party tools to manage the details for you. And as for an FTP client, I recommend Filezilla.

krekc

Thanks Mike.

Drakla

If "PHP and MySQL Web Development" is the book by Luke and Laura Welling then unless they've radically overhauled it - corrected all the bugs and what is blatently untested code, taken out all of the code that relies on globals being registered then avoid it. I've got the 2nd edition and won't even put it in a charity shop because of the damage it can do.

Rant!