Oscars Pool

March 4, 2018

I have never been one to pay much attention to award shows, but when my coworker suggested that our group should participate in an Oscar pool, I saw the chance to stretch some programming muscles and create a system to manage it. As far as systems go, this one isn't very complicated but it has been a fun project. 

The main features are that users have the ability to create a password-protected account which will allow them to log in to the system, browse a list of nominees by category and make a selection. Since our system opens shortly after nominees are announced, if a participant decides that they would like to adjust their selections, they may log in and do so. The selection process remains open until the end of business on Friday preceding the awards, at which time the interface only displays the selected choice, but does not allow modification. Once the system is locked I run a script which tallies the votes and reports to a specified Slack channel who the popular choices are for each category. When the big night arrives, a master account is used to choose the actual winners as they are announced. The system then announces the category and winner in the same Slack channel as well as what the current scores are. 

As I said, the system itself is very simple but was fun to develop and it's nice to see something I created being used up close. Developing for the web usually means that users are scattered across the region, country or world. 

Categories: PHP  Programming