Creating a database to record the number of users

Hi guys,

I am a creating a class room where in i want to record the attendance of the students who come in the class, Is there any way that we can create a database to store records of the students who come in, so which backend database does second life support, is it MY-SQL?
does anyone has a sample script that i can refer to create a database to store records

~Regrds
Ravish Katoch

Hello Ravish. If you go the XML-RPC route, the choice of database is pretty much open. You might want to checkout the XML-RPC article in the LSL Portal: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Category:LSL_XML-RPC

Yes you can use mysql to record the attendance of the students who come in your class, you maybe need some board where the students touch to "sign" assistence or maybe some type of visitor tracker to record the time spended too of each one.

For comunication with your outslside ,you need to take a look at this functions.

llHTTPRequest

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlHTTPRequest

llHTTPResponse


http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlHTTPResponse

And for the visitor tracker :

llSensor
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlSensor

and follow the respective links on the wiki page for

llSensorRepeat
llSensorRemove

Also for the board "sigin" with a simple Touch event its enough to send the httprequest to your database.

Hello,

Not sure because I have yet to try it myself but I dont think llHTTPResponse is available yet.

I could be wrong.

- Alberrt

http_response is not the same as http_server

http_response is used to get the response from the server when an httprequest was made it.

I really wouldn't use XMLRPC for this. llHTTPRequest is really all you need. Use the touch event to capture a student's Sign In/Sign Out, then if you need to actually "watch" them, use llSensorRepeat and sensor to scan the room every once in a while and see if they are still there. Here's how it would work:

key requestid; 
key student;
string studentname;
default
{
    
    touch_start(integer number)
    {
        student = llDetectedKey(0);
        studentname = llKey2Name(student);
        
        string time = llGetTimestamp();
        string datetime = llGetSubString(time,0,9) + " " + llGetSubString(time,11,18);
// puts the timestamp into the DATETIME format used by MySQL
        requestid = llHTTPRequest("http://www.yourdomain.com/yourscript.php", 
[HTTP_METHOD, "POST", HTTP_MIMETYPE, "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"], 
"parameter1=" + studentname + "&parameter2=" + (string)student + "&parameter3="
 + datetime); //This is the script send to the php script, which will process and connect 
with the database
    }

    http_response(key request_id, integer status, list metadata, string body)
    {  //this is where the response from the php script on your server will be processed
        if (request_id == requestid)
        {
            integer intx = llSubStringIndex(body,"<");
            string tbody = llGetSubString(body,0,intx);
            string error = llGetSubString(body,0,5);
            if(llStringTrim(error,STRING_TRIM) != "Error:") //check for error message
            {
                llInstantMessage(student, tbody);
                //llGiveInventory(student, name of item); //uncomment line if you want to
give the students something like a notecard of rules or a pop quiz or whatever.
                llInstantMessage(llGetOwner(), studentname + " has joined the class.");
            }
            else //response if the body is an error message
            {
                llInstantMessage(llGetOwner(), "There has been an error: " + body);
                llInstantMessage(student, "There is an error. The owner has been notified.");
            }
        }
    }
}

okay, I dunno if that compiles or not lol..but it's still not totally complete anyway. A good
start though. You're still going to have to get a web server, and create your database with
fields ID (int, auto_increment, primary), studentName (varchar), studentKey (varchar),
Time_In (datetime), Time_Out (datetime).

Your php script (represented by "yourscript.php" above), will need to gather the parameters sent, use those to populate a new record in the MySQL database, also checking whether the datetime variable goes into the Time_In or the Time_Out fields. Then, it will need to send a response using echo. The way I put it in this example, the error response would need to be something like "Error: " + mysql_error()".

As you can see, I wouldn't go with XMLRPC for this, you need it to be initiated from inworld rather than from the web server. Hope it helps!

/me gets ready for people to tear the code apart lol

Here is a Basic Visitor Logger that posts the info to a Web Server. I think its a good starting point.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Visitor_Logger_%28Web/Basic%29

WhiteStar