Good PHP & MySQL book that shows how to build a rating system?

Question

Looking for a good PHP & MySQL book that will show me how to build a rating system the correct way.

Answer 1

If you're referring to merely displaying a X out of 5 stars, the simplest way is to have only 2 columns added to your table:

1. average
2. vote_count

The average is the X value (so you don't have to compute it every time) and when you want to have a vote affect the average just do:

$new_average = (($row['average'] * $row['vote_count']) + $_POST['new_vote']) / ($row['vote_count'] + 1);

and just store that new_average. It's going to be important to store a list of people who voted and what object they voted on, so people can't vote a second time. This is the simplest solution and adequate 95% of the time.

PS: If this doesn't answer your problem, keep in mind your question was short and vague.

Answer 2

Note: There are no specific books about "how to cook this special application". You may only find general tutorials about CMS, OOP and Design Patterns.

---

How you create/design an application does not require any book, it just requires your ability to abstraction and creativity. Programming is just the "tool" through which you achieve your application.

---

If you are really interested in understanding rating sites, browse through the web an look at some opensource projects and try to understand their code.

For example:

• Aardvark PHP Topsite (http://www.aardvarktopsitesphp.com/)