I built a database-driven resource for a client that stores and displays the names and information of certain ‘items’. Eventually the database will contain 500+ of these ‘items’.
They now want me to add a rating system to the display of an individual item, but do not want me to build one from scratch (less cost to them). I found one that should work, but I have a few questions about it:
The results are stored in a text file instead of a database. If there are voting results for more than 500 items, would the text file still be appropriate?
This rating system comes from a basic tutorial, so it does not have any measures put in place to ensure a user only votes once. I know I will need to use cookies for this somehow, but I am a bit rusty in Javascript and have next to no experience with cookies. How complicated will this process be?
I would definitely store the ratings in the DB - it’ll be a lot easier to manage and query the data.
Set a cookie from PHP (I’m assuming this is the server-side language that you’re using?). If you check for the presence of the cookie when the page is requested, you can take the appropriate action like disabling / not rendering the rating control. Checkout the PHP manual page for some examples of working with cookies.
Thanks, @fretburner . I will set up a new table in their current database then and modify the code. I will probably be back here asking questions later about the connection between the javascript in this system, and the storing of the data in the database.