Please help with creating a web based scheduling page.

[BG4533]

I have been asked to create a website to schedule participants in some research I am helping with. The webpage will be hosted on a linux server and need to have the ability to read from and write to the server. The site will need a client page and researcher/ admin page. The researcher/admin page will need to have the ability to input and save available experiment times, check who is signed up for an experiment and other such things. The client side needs the ability to read the available times for an experiment, input information about the client and then remove the time for the client selected from the list.

My budget for this site is $0, so commercial solutions are probably out of the question. I used to do a decent amount of "basic" webpage programming, but is has been about 4 years since I have done much. I am familiar with javascript, but I don't think I can write to a server with it. I am also familiar with c, c++ and java and will learn a new language if necessary. Are there any tutorials out there that will help to get me started on this? Any help or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Brian

 

[BG4533]

Anyone?

 

[darktubbly]

I can't provide you with a tutorial per se, other than of course a Google search, but have you considered using one of the prebuilt packages available on the web? If you've got PHP installed, you could try one of the online collaboration scripts posted on this site.

 

[bunker]

Start reading some PHP books my friend.

 

[BG4533]

Fun fun... I think this is more work than I bargained for. Any reccomendations on a good PHP book? I am going to head to a book store to pick one up in a few hours here.

Thanks,
Brian

 

[bunker]

I think this is more work than I bargained for.

Heh heh...

I use Sam's Teach Yourself PHP in 24 hours and it's been good for me.

 

[Kilrsat]

PHP and MySQL Web Development

I believe the second edition is out.

That's the book that will teach you just about everything you need to know in order to pull this project off. From the basic ideas of PHP to database security and session management.

The alternative would be to create java applets for both and become very familiar with JDBC. You could create a little more *poof* with this approach, but the php design might be a tad easier.

 

[BG4533]

I think java applets might be a little too much for my needs. Would cgi work for this?

 

[BG4533]

I just picked up a book on perl and cgi. It looks a bit easier than PHP and mySQL. The only real limitations I saw would be performance. This site will only probably get a couple (who really knows) people per day and will have a PIII server almost dedicated to it. Any other downfalls to perl/cgi?

THanks,
Brian

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Yeah, perl is really hard to read.

 

[bunker]

Nothing wrong with using Perl if you're not going to have all that much action on it.

You will still need a database though, and if you're running Linux, MySQL it is.

 

[BG4533]

Hmmm....I cant just do it in a plain text file. Something in a set format? Like firstname/nlastname/nphone/ntime/n and go through it in a loop? Appointments do not need to be stored and actually should not be stored after they have passed, so the database will not get that big.

Brian

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

A text file would just be more trouble, less flexible, and would perform worse.

Databases are made specifically for stuff like that, and they rock at it.

 

[JonTheBaller]

Originally posted by: Kilrsat
PHP and MySQL Web Development

I believe the second edition is out.

That's the book that will teach you just about everything you need to know in order to pull this project off. From the basic ideas of PHP to database security and session management.

I highly recommend this book as well. I had the first version and thoroughly enjoyed it / learned a lot from it.

 

[BG4533]

Ok...I have decided I am going to use PHP/ my SQL now. I ordered PHP and MySQL Web Development from Amazon. I also found this tutorial which shows almost exactly what I want to do for the start of the page Link. I need the scheduling part done by 7/9 at least, the rest I have a bit more time for. I am a bit more optimistic now, but I am sure I will have more questions.

Thanks,
Brian

 

[notfred]

mod_perl is faster than mod_php. I know you already decided on PHP, but the "PHP is faster than Perl" argument is crap. PHP is ridiculously slow.

 

[BG4533]

So far the page is coming along better than expected using PHP/ mySQL. I have a question about dates though. Each entry will have a time associated with it. Something like 6/29/2003 @ 8pm. Is there an easy way to save and access this or some other form like it using PHP and SQL or should I just do it manually? By manually I just mean a bunch of separate individual fields storing hour, minute, day, etc. I want to be able to sort this by date and time, so just a string wont work.

Thanks,
Brian

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: notfred
mod_perl is faster than mod_php. I know you already decided on PHP, but the "PHP is faster than Perl" argument is crap. PHP is ridiculously slow.

Got a link to some benchmarks or something?

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

BG4533, check out the sql TIME column type. Personally I use int's and unix timestamps but I think TIME types may be a better way to go.

 

[BG4533]

I have most of my PHP script working I think, but now that I have tried to install SQL on redhat 9 I keep running into probems. I have tried multiple versions of mySQL 1.3.**, but no matter what I get to a point where I type safe_mysqld & to start my sql server and it will respond with something like Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /var/lib/mysql and then mysqld ended. I dont think it is supposed to do this, but either wat SQL is not really running after I execute this. Any ideas what is wrong? I have tried all kinds of tutorials on the internet and they all lead to this point where I get stuck.

Thanks,
Brian

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

MySQL 1.3? Maybe you're confusing the number with apache? MySQL is at 4.x, with 3.2x also being common.

 

[BG4533]

Sorry...3.23.**. Guess I had other things on my mind.