SimpleLeague

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SimpleLeague is a very (and I mean very) minimalistic tool to display tabular league data (results, rankings etc.) in existing websites.

Why SimpleLeague?

I needed a simple way to insert database-driven HTML tables with results and rankings into an existing site, which was created with a CMS.
There weren't any plugins available for that CMS which provided anything like this, so I had to build it myself...but I wanted to do it with the least effort possible (because I knew that I would need to enter only a few results per year).

That's why I decided to build a "technology-agnostic" and very minimalistic solution:
SimpleLeague just consists of a few PHP files that spit out raw HTML tables. You need a server with PHP and MySQL to install it, but you can integrate it in websites built with any technology, as long as you are able to include content from external URLs.
There isn't even an admin screen, and it's unlikely that there will ever be one.
To enter players, results etc., you just edit the database directly in phpMyAdmin (or whatever tool your server provides).
Yes, it's that minimalistic.
And yes, this means that you probably need to be a developer to be able to use SimpleLeague.

How to install

You need a web server with PHP and a MySQL database.

To install SimpleLeague, just:

Download the current ZIP file from the download page (see "Links" section above)
Copy the content of the src folder onto your server
Set the permissions of the cache subfolder to 777
Create a new MySQL database and execute the content of db.sql to create the tables
Change the database connection settings in inc.config.php (server, database, user and password)
Optional: Edit the other constants in the config file if you want to edit the terminology used in the table headers (like Player, Season and so on).

To integrate it with your site, use whatever is provided by the technology your site was built with, for example:

HTML inline frames
PHP include (with allow_url_include enabled)
Server Side Includes
For sites built with Jekyll: jQuery and a few include files

For example URLs, see below.

Terminology and URLs

The following text gives a short explanation of SimpleLeague's core concepts and how they link to the database.

Bold words refer to a table of the same name.

The "core data" of SimpleLeague are players and (optional) teams.
Think of something like StarCraft: there are two "players" (actual humans), but their "teams" are Terrans, Zerg or Protoss.

There are one or more seasons.
A season has a name (like "2013") and consists of one or more rounds.

Each round has a number and can optionally have a name (something like "Winter 2013").
A round consists of one or more games.

Each game has exactly two players facing each other.
(or just one player if he has no opponent - in this case, just set the opponent's player_id to 0)
The players score points and victory points.
Think of the way scores in sports leagues work: the actual game result is something like 13 : 8 victory points (goals, touchdowns...whatever), and the winner gets 2 points for winning, which directly affect his position in the league rankings. So the position in the rankings is mainly determined by the amount of "league points", the victory points only matter when there's a draw in league points.

You can use this SQL script to create a database with sample data.

Here is a list of the available URLs, with examples how the rendered tables look like.
The example tables use the sample data from the script above.

List of players (and their teams) for a season:

URL:

/season_players/?season_name=2013

Example:

Schedule of all rounds and games for a season:

URL:

/season_schedule/?season_name=2013

Optional: To display a single round, pass the round number as the second parameter:

/season_schedule/?season_name=2013&round_number=2

Example:
(without the "round number" parameter)

Results for a single round:

Note: only visible when the round is finished.
A round is considered finished when the finished column in the rounds table is set to 1.

URL:

/round_results/?season_name=2013&round_number=2

Example:

Optional: Append the show_unfinished parameter to display results even if the round is still unfinished (to check results before setting the round to finished):

/round_results/?season_name=2013&round_number=2&show_unfinished=1

Current ranking:

Note: only incorporates the results of finished rounds where the round number is equal or smaller than the specified one.
A round is considered finished when the finished column in the rounds table is set to 1.

URL:

/season_ranking/?season_name=2013&round_number=2

Example:

Optional: Append the show_unfinished parameter to display results of unfinished rounds as well (to check results before setting the round to finished):

/season_ranking/?season_name=2013&round_number=2&show_unfinished=1

Cross table per season:

Notes:

only incorporates the results of finished rounds.
A round is considered finished when the finished column in the rounds table is set to 1.
In each game, the player mentioned first is considered the "home" player (the second player is the "guest" player)

URL:

/season_crosstab/?season_name=2013

Example:

Statistics

SimpleLeague also includes some features which generate statistics across all seasons.
There's a setting to exclude certain seasons from these statistics: just set no_statistics in the seasons table to false.

All-time results across all seasons

Notes:

only incorporates the results of finished rounds.
A round is considered finished when the finished column in the rounds table is set to 1.
In each game, the player mentioned first is considered the "home" player (the second player is the "guest" player)

URL:

/alltime_allresults/

Example:

Custom templates

You can provide your own templates if you don't like the default ones.

All URLs accept the name of a custom template as an optional parameter:

put the template file (with .mustache file extension) into the /tpl folder where the default templates are:
```
/tpl/my_template.mustache
```
Append the custom_template parameter to the URL:
```
&custom_template=my_template
```

Development

Export settings for phpMyAdmin to create db.sql:

structure only (no data!)
AUTO_INCREMENT off

How to make a release:

Prerequisites:

Windows
The script expects the 7za.exe from the 7-Zip Command Line Version in the parent folder

Steps:

Increase the version number in version-number.bat
Run release.bat (this will create a zip file in the release subfolder)

Acknowledgements

SimpleLeague makes use of the following open source projects:

Mustache.php

License

SimpleLeague is licensed under the MIT License. See License.txt for details.

SimpleLeague

Links

Why SimpleLeague?

How to install

Terminology and URLs

List of players (and their teams) for a season:

Schedule of all rounds and games for a season:

Results for a single round:

Current ranking:

Cross table per season:

Statistics

All-time results across all seasons

Custom templates

Development

Acknowledgements

License

Project Info