Automatically removing "points" from user

[Potatis]

Hello,

 

I am trying to develop a merit based competition for students who do online worksheets. I want an incentive for students to do a set of worksheets on as many consecutive days as possible. At the completion of each worksheet set I can easily have the form add points to the database, say 4 points, and if a student does these for 4 days, then they'll have 16 points which would give them a rank, 5 days would give them another 4 points and a higher rank for having 20 total points and so on.

 

But say if on day 5 the student didn't do a worksheet set, I'd like to have 4 points removed from their total score, making them go down a level. If they missed another day, they'd lose another 4. Although it is easy to remove points manually, how can I automate it so that I don't have to check who has done the worksheet set everyday? Is it even possible to do this automatically?

 

Thanks for any help.

[fenway]

Can't be that automatic... though a left join could find them esaily.

[mwasif]

Make a script to do this and setup cronjob/scheduler to run at the end of the day.

[Potatis]

Ok, thanks very much for your replies.

[fou2enve]

ive also done this, by using the date and a flat file, if the date didn't match the flat file date, then it was a new day, the query would run, and the flat file updated.

 

cron works, but this is just an alternative.

[aschk]

Alternatively update the points total the next time a query is done? i.e. i want to  know how many points student A has, do the SQL query, and perform a date_sub to find out if they're outside their allotted time. I'd have to think a little about this sort of query because obviously you'll need to work out what happens when a skipped period occurs (i.e. last date was yesterday but before yesterday they missed 3 days).