Referral Code

MrFakePIE

Hello, I'm new to this forum, so PLEASE let me know if I'm doing something bad, thanks.
So, I need to make referral system (kind of), if anyone could help me, that would be great!
I know how to display the code from database, so that's not a problem (I don't need to hash it either).
So, I want that a signed in user could see his referral code, and so when user gives his code to someone they put it in registration page, and register, but if they don't write a valid code, registration would fail.
And the referring user could see how many users have registered using his code.
I have an idea how it would work:
Currently existing users would get their code, which would be generated by "PHP Random Code Generator" of some sort, then it would put it into a MySQL table (PDO), php code would display it on page.
When user puts in a code on registration page, when he submits the form, it checks if code is valid, and who it belongs to, and does +1 (Adds 1) to the number of registration completed with his code.
And so on.

Hope you could help me, thanks.

NogDog

You could store a reference to the referring user's ID in the user DB table, and any time you need a count of referrals, just do something like:

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM users WHERE referrer_id = <user_id here>

MrFakePIE

NogDog;11032921 wrote:
You could store a reference to the referring user's ID in the user DB table, and any time you need a count of referrals, just do something like:
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM users WHERE referrer_id = <user_id here>

I just tried doing that, but it just picks a random user and adds him 1 to referred users count.

Weedpacket

MrFakePIE wrote:
I just tried doing that, but it just picks a random user and adds him 1 to referred users count.

Unlikely, since that query doesn't update anything. It would appear that there is something wrong with either

The user_id you're using to identify which user to credit with the referral
Your database statement which performs the update
Your design of the table and how you store user IDs is broken (and you haven't told MySQL to complain if you try to store invalid data).

Those are three possibilities. There are probably others. Based on what information you have supplied, we can't say which is the true cause of the problem.