unemployment

October 7, 2011

Well yes, the points for friends would be dynamic not necessarily 20 points. So the more points my friends earn, over time, not at the point of befriending, the more points I will earn. So this will be a completely live system. That's where the complexity builds in. I'm not sure how to work that out.

Neither do i, because as I said it will cause a circular reference and cannot be done. Take the following scenario:

Alan is friends with Bob, Bob is friends with Chris, and Chris is friends with Alan.

To Alan's score you have to calculate the points based upon his friendship with Bob (which will be based upon Bob's score). But, to determine Bob's score you first have to calculate the points he will get based upon his friendship with Chris - which required you to calculate Chris's score. To determine Chris's score you have to determine how many points he gets for his friendship to Alan. And THAT requires you to calculate Alan's score which is what you started out trying to determine.

The model you are proposing is not possible. You can have a variable scoring model, but you need to come up with something that can be done. As I said, you can do this IF you only calculate the "friendship" score only at the time the friendship is made. But, if the friendship score is to be variable in real-time it just won't work.

Hmm that really sucks. I see your point.

October 7, 2011

Well yes, the points for friends would be dynamic not necessarily 20 points. So the more points my friends earn, over time, not at the point of befriending, the more points I will earn. So this will be a completely live system. That's where the complexity builds in. I'm not sure how to work that out.

October 7, 2011

Essential here is a sample system.

Points gain for tasks done -

Personal Profile completion = 200 points

Created or joined a verified company profile = 200 points

Having a company video = 50 points

Blog Post = 50 Points

Number of friends = 20 points each

Number of votes submitted = 5 points each

Number of fans your company receives = 10 points each

Twitter shares for blog post = 1 points

Facebook shares for blog post = 1 points

Google plus 1 for blog post = 1 points

It would kind of cool if this could be dynamic... If one user has 20500 point and one has 100 points and I become friends with both of themI don't want to be given the same 20 point gain. I should be given more points for the person that has more points because they are a more valuable contact.

Any thoughts on how to be code this out?

Some of this will be static and some of it will be dynamic.

October 7, 2011

I'm making a game where you earn points and lose points based on the actions that you take and the actions that your opponents take. What's the best way to create this system. Should I use mysql to store all the data and if so, should I set up the actions in a seperate table or should I just join the actions from all of my other tables. I'm not quite sure what the best method is.

October 6, 2011

looks like I made another dumb mistake. Good call out. Thanks.

October 6, 2011

function fetch_blog_post_mini_profile_by_pid($pid)

{

$pid = (int)$pid;

$sql = "SELECT `postcontent` FROM `blog_posts` WHERE `post_id` = '${pid}'";

$result = mysql_query($sql);

return mysql_fetch_assoc($result);

}

October 6, 2011

I'm storing a blog post in MySQL and it has html entities in it. I tried doing...

$info = fetch_blog_post_mini_profile_by_pid($_GET['pid']);

$info = substr($info, 0, 200);

to get a summary of the content, but it says it's not a string. What am I missing?

October 1, 2011

Yeah, you're right. Those commas can kill you. I guess I wasn't looking in the right spot.

October 1, 2011

I'm trying to get the data for a single user, but I have a loop error and I don't understand why. Can someone please clarify where I went wrong?

function fetch_user_info_mini_profile_by_uid($uid){
$uid = (int)$uid;

$sql = "SELECT
			'${uid}' AS `uid`,
			`username` AS username,
			`firstname`,
			`lastname`,
			`accounttype`,
			`country`,
			`state`,
			`city`,
		FROM `users`
		WHERE `id` = '${uid}'";

$query = mysql_query($sql);

$profile = array();

while (($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($query)) !== false)
{		
	$profile = array(
		'uid'				=> $row['uid'],
		'firstname'			=> $row['firstname'],
		'lastname'			=> $row['lastname'],
		'username'			=> $row['username'],
		'accounttype'		=> ($row['accounttype'] == '1') ? 'Entreprenuer' : 'Investor',
		'country'         	=> $row['country'],
		'state'				=> $row['state'],
		'city' 				=> $row['city'],
		'display_name'		=> ucwords("${row['firstname']} ${row['lastname']}"),
	);
}

$profile['avatar'] = getUserAvatar($row['username']);

return $profile;
}

September 30, 2011

This code is working for me but it just looks sloppy.

Can this be written nicer?

echo '
<a href="/u/'.$user_info['username'].'">
<img src="', getUserAvatar($user_info['username']), "\" class=\"avatar navigation small f_left clear\" title=\"${user_info['display_name']}\" alt=\"${user_info['display_name']}\" />
<span>${user_info['display_name']}</span>
<span class=\"tri\">&#x25bc;</span>
</a>";

September 29, 2011

why do you have id and company_id/user_id fields in tables 2 and 3 and why oh why did you name a field with a reserved word (time)?

Basicly what you want to do is pull it out the database without the grouping, and then run conditional formating against your "time" field that only shows actions from either table if it has been within a set period, and is not a duplicate of the last. There are a couple of ways of doing that in PHP, if that is what you are using. What are you using to display the results of the query and how comfortable are you with that language?

That said, you could possably pull it off using a CASE clause in the select statement if you are really heart set on having it done in the SQL.

I'd much rather prefer to do it in the sql. When I made tables I probably should have just labeled them all id and I didn't know time was a reserved word.... hmm the things you learn. I've never used a case statement and I'd have no idea where to start. I don't know how you can compare rows and time intervals. The reason why I'd rather do it in the sql is that my php is already set which I don't really want to touch. Plus getting the proper sql would be a little more efficient.

Can you give me a good example of how to use a case statement for this?

September 28, 2011

what you want to do is a formatting issue, not a query issue. could you post up your table structures please?

Tables 1 - actions

id, actiondescription

Table 2 - Company Actions

id, company_id, action_id, time, details

Table 3 - User Actions

id, user_id, action_id, time, details

The only data I need grouped by interval should be the user and company actions. Everything else is fine.

September 28, 2011

I am in the process of creating a news feed. The news feed will say something like... You have just updated your profile picture. Every time a user updates their profile picture, a news feed row is added to the news feed.

The problem:

If a user uploads their picture three times in a row it will say...