“A carelessly planned project takes three times longer to complete than expected; a carefully planned project takes only twice as long.”
The Nightlife Project is a novice PHP/MySQL tutorial. While you don’t have to know a whole lot to get started, you should understand the basics of PHP and MySQL. Knowledge of variables, functions and flow control is required. If the following block of code makes sense to you, you are ready to start the project:
<?php
repeat('foo', 15);
function repeat($string, $count) {
for($i = 0; $i < $count; ++$i) {
mysql_query("INSERT INTO `data` VALUES ('$string')");
}
}
?>
Now, an explanation is due.
You work for Vision Nightlife, a nightlife promotion company working out of Las Vegas. Your company hires promoters to hand out nightclub flyers for the various clubs that have hired your company. These promoters give flyers to tourists for things like free entry to Domi Lounge, a free drink at Club Septuro, etc. Each flyer is stamped with a unique code identifying the promoter that drove the tourists to the club. The club will then pay your company, based on how many people your promoters drove to their club. The amount is based on how many people and what day of the week. For example, Hoodoo Lounge pays $1 per person on Friday or Saturday nights, if you bring between 1 and 10 people. If you bring between 11 and 20 people, it is $1.50 per person, and 21 or more people is $2.25 per person. On a Wednesday night, those amounts are cut in half. Your company wants you to write software to keep track of all of this information.
Your software needs to track clubs, promoters, payment rates, referral amounts and payout amounts.
This is just an introduction to the nightlife project. Part 2 will begin looking at the database structure and writing the ideal schema for each table.