Tutorial: How to build a poll system with PHP and mySQL
If you have been doing the other tutorials on this site you will notice that I have been teaching PHP and mySQL through projects. Projects that you can slot into your website, or if you are building a project, code that you can use within your project. I start from the ground up, assuming you have no prior knowledge of the topic. So today, we will be building a Poll System using PHP and mySQL. Polls are great for getting user feedback from your site visitors.
The poll system we will be using today will read and store from a mySQL database. mySQL is an extremely fast, efficient and stable database tool. Our poll system will read the questions stored in the database, then display the options to the users, then when a user selects an option and clicks submit, that selection will be stored in the database whereby results will be further calculated from this pool of results. The tutorial today will teach you PHP, not the database construction side of things. If you are interested in the mySQL side of it, just load up phpmyadmin and look at the database design I have made for the tutorial. I will however provide you with the database design which you can just import, which I will describe how to do. Anyway, lets get started.
Source: poll.zip
Demo: http://www.jotlab.com/tutorials/poll/index.php
15 Responses to “Tutorial: How to build a poll system with PHP and mySQL”
By Cristi
on Jun 11, 2008
It would be perfect if it had a form to add the question and a form to edit them. Anyway Good Job.
By VoiDeT
on Jun 11, 2008
Yep sure.
You should take the guestbook tutorial and build that feature yourself! It is not hard at all
By chor khee
on Jul 16, 2008
nice one man! just a simple question. Can this be done using jsp and mYsql? are there any links for that?
By VoiDeT
on Jul 16, 2008
Hey Chor Khee,
I don’t know JSP, sorry.
Have fun with the port!
By Ana
on Jul 25, 2008
Thank you very much it really is great, it gave me the whole picture. I am using Access data base, how can I use this nice piece of code for Access. Thanks again.
By Hunter
on Aug 11, 2008
Hi,
I downloaded the source, and uploaded it in tact, minus editing in my database information.
I get this error:
http://www.nineprinces.org/hunter/php/tutorials/
”
Warning: mysql_num_rows(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/backline/public_html/hunter/php/tutorials/poll.php on line 4″
What’s up w/ that?
By Hunter
on Aug 11, 2008
Nm, fixed it
By VoiDeT
on Aug 11, 2008
And how did you fix it?
By Hanayo
on Sep 24, 2008
I tried working on it but I as totally lost when it came to the whole phpmyAdmin thing??
I couldn’t figure out what you were talking about the click Insert or whatever since I didn’t see that anywhere on my page…
Like I know how to read html/css fairly well and can read xhtml. But php is what I’m learning, and so i know i put the codes in all the right spots but I don’t know what you meant by that and I tried but I dont’ think i got it…
http://www.aestheticloveinc.com/poll/index.php and it’s just blank….
By blckheart
on Sep 25, 2008
RE: And how did you fix it? Warning: mysql_num_rows(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in
To fix the error, you will have to connect to the database. In the downloaded files there is no config.php file or db.inc file to connect to the database, therefore the mysql_num_rows cannot find any info from the database, because there is no connection to the database. Or at least this is what happened in my case.
To connect to the database use the following code in the poll.php file or create a seperate config.php file and just use an include ‘config.php’; or require ‘config.php’; in the top of your poll.php file
//Connection to Database
$hostName = “localhost”;
$databaseName = “yourdatabasename”;
$databaseusername = “yourdbusername”;
$dbpassword = “yourdbpassword”;
$connect = @mysql_connect($host, $yourdbusername, $yourdbpassword);
if (!mysql_select_db($databaseName, $connect))
echo ‘Could not connect to database’;
I hope this helps, i dont know why someone would ask for help on the error and then say he fixed it without giving a solution, he has the time to ask but not the time to help, i think that sucks!
By VoiDeT
on Sep 27, 2008
blckheart what do you think is sitting in the root folder? would it be a config.php file by anychance? With this code in it?
< ?php
//database settings
$hostname = 'localhost';
$username = 'yourusername';
$password = 'yourpassword';
$dbname = 'poll';
$connect = mysql_connect($hostname, $username, $password);
mysql_select_db($dbname);
?>
Look at the files.
By BlueDevil18
on Sep 28, 2008
I set everyhing up. Added a New Poll and Questions to the poll with the correct pid. However, when I browse to the file(poll.php) on the server, it still comes up “No Poll Yet” Am I not doing something?
By BlueDevil18
on Sep 28, 2008
I need some help with this. I think i set up up correctly, but i still get “no poll yet”
By Rkrueger
on Oct 12, 2008
hey i was doing this and it came up with the error that the function “max()” doesn’t have enough parameters..
can someone check this out?
By Hodde
on Oct 28, 2008
I get the “no poll yet”-message too.. and i’m also pretty sure i set the poll up correctly..