Question

Poll System - Track if already taken part

Asked by: andoneknight

Hi,

I have a polling system on my website which is located on a sidebar that is included with include_once. I currently have it set up so that once the user has taken part in the poll, javascript sets a cookie on their machine and then the php checks whether this cookie is set and then displays the poll choices, or the results of the poll depending on this cookie.

My problem is that i want the cookie name to be equal to the unique ID of the poll so that if a new poll is coded then the cookie wont be set and the user will then get the poll choices again. As i am setting the cookie with javascript (I cant do it in the php file as data has already been sent to the browser) I cannot change the cookie name based on the poll ID as this information is only available in the php script. Is there a way around this, or a better way to do a polling system?
Many thanks.

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Asked On
2009-09-03 at 11:49:35ID24705629
Topics

PHP Scripting Language

,

JavaScript

,

Web Languages/Standards

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
11

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Answers

 

by: AirsprayPosted on 2009-09-03 at 12:02:10ID: 25253808

How about setting a variable to the cookie variable like
Poll_123_Answered=1

123 being the poll's ID.

 

by: andoneknightPosted on 2009-09-03 at 12:19:53ID: 25253987

That's what I want to do - but that ID is only available in the PHP script/session variable from a mysql query

 

by: Slick812Posted on 2009-09-03 at 17:21:36ID: 25256126

hello andoneknight, , What I would try is just to echo (write) in PHP a cookie name from PHP into the javascript as the document.cookie, , like -

document.cookie='<?php if ($Reload1) echo $cookName1; else echo $cookName2; ?>';

 

by: AirsprayPosted on 2009-09-03 at 23:02:08ID: 25257099

Code below assumes your poll answer send to parameters: PollAnswer and PollId.

<?php
if (isset($PollAnswer))
?>
document.cookie='Poll_<?php echo $PollId;?>_Answered=1';
<?php
}
?>

                                              
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by: AirsprayPosted on 2009-09-03 at 23:03:07ID: 25257103

Oh, obviously you need to read those values from $_GET, $_POST or $_REQUEST.

 

by: andoneknightPosted on 2009-09-04 at 01:58:39ID: 25257779

Thanks for your comments. This unfortunately won't work I dont think as the javascript is in an external .JS file so it wouldn't recognise the PHP tags surely?

 

by: AirsprayPosted on 2009-09-04 at 02:31:37ID: 25257903

You have to compromise somewhere. This is one way of doing that:

index.php (or what ever you call it)
<script type="text/javascript" src="javascript.php"></script>
 
<script type="text/javascript">
bar();
foo();
bar();
</script>
 
 
Javascript.php:
<?php
header('Content-type: text/javascript');
$myVar = 'PHP Value';
?>
var test = 'JavaScript Value';
function foo()
{
    test = '<?php echo $myVar; ?>';
}
 
function bar()
{
    alert(test);
}

                                              
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by: Slick812Posted on 2009-09-04 at 12:19:47ID: 25262544

I am not sure what you may be indicating with your response of -
"This unfortunately won't work I dont think as the javascript is in an external .JS file so it wouldn't recognise the PHP tags surely"

Are you saying you need an entire NEW Poll System, since you don't see a way to work this in your current one. For me and maybe others, I can not tell what your current poll system may or may not can do, or what parts of it can be made to do what you want to do. You give so little info about it.

 

by: andoneknightPosted on 2009-09-04 at 13:03:28ID: 25262891

Nope, what im saying is that if all of my javascript is in an external file (not a php file or the main html document) it wont recognise PHP tags. "document.cookie='<?php if ($Reload1) echo $cookName1; else echo $cookName2; ?>';" wouldnt work as its not in a php file but a JS file or am i wrong?

 

by: Slick812Posted on 2009-09-04 at 13:55:51ID: 25263278

you are not wrong about that, it will not work in the "FIXED" external JS file, however Airspray has shown you a framework for a "dynamic" changeable JS file that is a PHP script that does the javascript AND has PHP variables written into it. But you may not want the trouble of redoing your external JS file as a PHP script. So I do not understand why you can not set your own cookies with JS and PHP as show above, and not use the external JS for cookies, since you seem to not want to deal with rewriting the external JS. You can also have more than one cookie, you can use the external JS cookie AND add your own cookie (PHP) for the view on your page or you can change the existing cookie, and add data to it. Can you tell use more about your code, do you have any JS variables that have the external cookie name or data?

 

by: andoneknightPosted on 2009-09-04 at 22:59:47ID: 25265101

Slick,

Thanks for your responses - I am going to use Airspray's solution I just haven't got round to it yet! My response was simply because I didn't see straight away where that code was supposed to go as I have never written a dynamic JS in a PHP script!

Thanks again

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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