I knew one of the things I was going to need to learn for larger scale web development was databasing. I’ve been dodging it for a while by using flat files, but there are certain things you just can’t do with text. I needed a project that would be able to utilize what a real database can offer. It struck me to make a program that allowed people to find out who was in their classes, a perfect use of databasing. Now only to teach myself MySQL/PHP.
I got some advice from the people on Chief Delphi, which pointed me to a great tutorial. Combined with another tutorial Chris had lying around, I was able to cobble together enough of a script to enter data to the database, and read it out into an array, then echo that out into a table. From here I did a bit more tweaking a developed some good HTML forms to allow users to put in data. I wrote a simple backend for myself, which I later updated to allow me to directly edit the entries.
I gave the link out to some friends to test, and told them to send it around. In under four days, I had over two hundred users. By the end of the summer, there were over 500 different users. Some people entered fake information, which is a problem I would want to address in a future version. I would set up e-mail linked accounts to make sure everyone had at least a real e-mail address, which would also allow for editing classes. One of the shortcomings of the current version is that users can’t change data once they've entered it, and can only enter one semester of data.
Still, the viral nature of the site surprised me. I did’t really expect to get more than a hundred users, especially outside of my own grade. Almost 500 classes were entered by users; an incredibly high number. As the old addage goes, "If you build a better class comparison system, they will beat a path to your door."
Overall, it was very useful for what I wanted to do with it: learn databasing. It’s really cool so many people found it useful.
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