poll page

[pistolpapa]

I'm fairly new to php and mySQL. Being a dog lover, I'm thinking about making a personal website where there's a poll page about America's favorate dogs. This is the idea in my head.

1. drop down menu for people to select their region, say hawaii or new york.
2. several text boxes to get people's input as vote on dog kinds
3. email address
4. submit button

After submittion, the names get validated (meaning repeated entries will only count once), email address got recorded into database, and votes get stored into database.

Don't wanna bore the follks here, I like to have the top five kinds of dogs of america listed as a feedback from the database, so it won't need to be updated often even when the ranking changes. In addition, statistics about top entries could be analyzed in a pie chart.

AAAaaright, i'm finally over. Now my question is that, am I pretty much looking at serious php and mySQL programming from scratch? I've tried to look into scripts such as phppoll, phpQuestionnaire... which offers execellent poll service, but doesn't do everything I needed, so now I'm at this confusion point of what to do. Any light is going to be appreciated.

God bless.

[simonf]

What you could do is download a cookie to their PC and if they try to go to the data form page make a pop up to say already voted etc. This would not stop them deleting the cookie if you give it a simple name, but it would confuse most people and make the complete process faster, as it would not have to search the complete DB looking for duplicates. Just a suggestion.

[simonf]

Hi

A free poll script at this url

[pistolpapa]

Thanks Simon,

to complete my project though, I need more than just the script provided. Am I looking at serious PHP/mySQL coding from scratch, or I can use partially the code and modify myself.

[pistolpapa]

What you could do is download a cookie to their PC and if they try to go to the data form page make a pop up to say already voted etc. This would not stop them deleting the cookie if you give it a simple name, but it would confuse most people and make the complete process faster, as it would not have to search the complete DB looking for duplicates. Just a suggestion.

Sounds good.

Actually, I'd like them to vote only once on one day, but if they think of some more names some other day, they are welcome to come back and vote tomorrow. So if there anyway to check their email address, and if it's the same one from an earlier input today, then they are prompted not to vote again, or the redirected to a page which says no you can no longer vote.

[Twey]

IP and cookie both, I'd think. Neither are certain measures, but neither should have any adverse effects either.

[djr33]

IPs for dialup users rotate, so if you have 20 people from AOL visiting your site, you might end up with one who can't vote because their IP at the time matches what someone else had at the time they voted.


Logins are the only sure way. Aside from that, IPs are good, but if people wish to cheat, they can go to another computer.

Remember, you could just put "please don't vote twice"; the people who would honor that will honor using only their computer.
But the people who wouldn't honor that might use another machine... cheaters will always be cheaters.

So... if you have a way that it can be gotten around, it's not that much better than just "please don't vote twice".

Just something to think about.


Checking the email will only stop stupid users who don't know to put a new email. UNLESS you make them varify by an email sent to them... which is too much work for you and too much for them.
Also, people (myself included) have multiple email addresses sometimes for this purpose, or signing up for things that will inevitably give them spam at the email they use... so.. use a backup.
Cheaters, again, can cheat.

[simonf]

Actually, I'd like them to vote only once on one day, but if they think of some more names some other day, they are welcome to come back and vote tomorrow. So if there anyway to check their email address, and if it's the same one from an earlier input today, then they are prompted not to vote again, or the redirected to a page which says no you can no longer vote.

You can date the cookie.. I.E only valid for the day in question!!!

[simonf]

Something like this:

/**
* Sets a Cookie with the given name and value.
*
* name Name of the cookie
* value Value of the cookie
* [expires] Expiration date of the cookie (default: end of current session)
* [path] Path where the cookie is valid (default: path of calling document)
* [domain] Domain where the cookie is valid
* (default: domain of calling document)
* [secure] Boolean value indicating if the cookie transmission requires a
* secure transmission
*/
function setCookie(name, value, expires, path, domain, secure)
{
document.cookie= name + "=" + escape(value) +
((expires) ? "; expires=" + expires.toGMTString() : "") +
((path) ? "; path=" + path : "") +
((domain) ? "; domain=" + domain : "") +
((secure) ? "; secure" : "");
}

[simonf]

Another example of a cookie that counts Cookie Example