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Dream Team Help

Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 9:15 am
by Dawson
Hey guys,

not sure if this is the right place to put this question, please move to the right place if needed.

Anyway to get down to the question, some of my friends have a dream team fantasy football league. We use the points and scoring from dreamteamfc.com. Currently my friend who's running it sends a email out to us all. We pick our teams from the list of players from the sun dream team fc then email him back. He then enters all the teams and players into a excel spreadsheet and sets up a formula that copies from a sheet with all the points that he updates from a newspaper. Takes a while to setup.

Anyway I thought this was madness especially as our league gets bigger. Currently 22 of us but its going to involve a lot more work as more people join in. For example my cousin does the same thing and theres 100+ of them. Some poor sod has to setup the initial formula's for 100+ teams with 11 players in each. That's 1000+ formulas he has to setup 8O Not to mention when the transfer periods opens up which involves them storing data and then moving in each teams transfer changes.

Anyway I figured there would be a easier way of doing this. My thinking was once or twice a week I could copy and paste the data for goalkeepers, defenders, midfielder and strikers (http://www.dreamteamfc.com/fantasyfootb ... .aspx?pp=1) into excel then convert that to mysql database or which ever database would be easier, can php copy direct from excel?

Then setup something for each person taking part to select his team from the database. This would then be put into a table to show his points and scores. Then also a global ladder to show how he's doing in comparison to everyone else. At the moment this is all done in Excel. Would make it so much easier if I can automate it somewhat.

Would also need a way that come transfer period there 2 or three through the year that they can swap 3 three players if they wish. Meaning upto 3 players they removed would need to have there points stored and then extract the info for there 3 new players coming in. Bare in mind they can only have points from the point they start using the players. I guess this could be done by taking away the points point upto said date on the total amount of points he has so far.

considering how popular the sun dream team is and how many people do there own mini leagues I thought someone may have already set something up but I couldn't find anything.

anyway if someone can provide me with some help/tips and point me in the right direction. I've not really done anything like this before. I guess the first step will be to build the database and setup something so people can register there own teams.

Thanks in advance.

Re: Dream Team Help

Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 9:30 am
by ghurtado
I would say that if you are going to automate the process at any level with PHP / MySQL, you should do it all the way and eliminate the need for a spreadsheet in the first place. I would provide an entry page where participants can make their selections and changes. This would also mean you have to provide them with a password.

Look first to see if anyone has already created a fantasy football PHP app, there have to be more than a few out there.

Re: Dream Team Help

Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 9:56 am
by Dawson
thanks for the help, silly me never thought to look for a generic fantasy football app. Was specifically looking for a dreamteamfc app.

found http://www.developer.com/lang/php/article.php/3636686 on my first search. Titled Scaffolding with CakePHP - Managing Your Fantasy Football Team. Reading now.

Re: Dream Team Help

Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 10:18 am
by Dawson
It would seem using cakephp I could get something setup quite quickly and easily. My problem with the above example is they want us to enter players manually. What I need is to be able to copy and paste the big list of players at once, so each week I can update the points and players easily.

Anyone have any experince with cakephp? must be easy enough to modify as wanted.

Re: Dream Team Help

Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 10:50 am
by onion2k
Just for the record as I think you've moved on from the idea in the original post, PHP can read directly from Excel. There's an ODBC connector for Excel so PHP can treat it like any other ODBC database.

Re: Dream Team Help

Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 12:11 pm
by Dawson
A friend of mine has convince me to try do it in .net this will allow me to learn a new skill set. Would seem a lot of companies are after it.

Unless someone can tell me otherwise?

Re: Dream Team Help

Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 12:16 pm
by ghurtado
Wouldn't learning PHP also be learning a new skill?

Re: Dream Team Help

Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 12:31 pm
by onion2k
Dawson wrote:A friend of mine has convince me to try do it in .net this will allow me to learn a new skill set. Would seem a lot of companies are after it.

Unless someone can tell me otherwise?
If you're doing this in order to learn an 'in demand' skill, write it in Java.

Re: Dream Team Help

Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 3:41 pm
by Dawson
aye that was the idea "in demand". Although that may have just been scrapped since my host doesn't support asp.net

Re: Dream Team Help

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 9:45 am
by Hilton
I've been running just this for about 6 years now. Once I have everyone's teams in electronically, from an entry form I've devised, I set the game up which takes about 4 hours, then it's just pasting-in the latest scores and updating. I currently run a league of 74.

The transfer windows take a bit of work but it not too difficult.

As it is not possible to attach *.xls files to this message, I'm unable to forward a copy of my set-up, but will do if I'm provided with an alternative address.