PHPchara is a character test engine based on PHP and MySQL. The project was started sometime in 2003 and has first been released under the GNU General Public License in January 2004. See the example installation.
The information for the test (characters, questions, answers, and how these are connected) is administered using a PHP interface. And you can use BBcode similar tagging ([i], [b], and some others) which is surprisingly even documented.
PHPchara should be bug free but there are problems - for instance, documentation is rudimentary - we are still fighting with. It works for us, and should work for anybody matching the requirements below.
Read the included INSTALL.txt for installation instructions and README.txt for a few instructions how to use what you installed...
From the version requirements we know about, you will need
- A web server with PHP
- PHP 4.3.0 or higher, with
- gd library support, and a gd library version that supports the image types (PNG/GIF/JPEG) you want to use
- MySQL support
- Access to a MySQL server, and appropriate permissions to create a new database or write to an existing database
There might be a version requirement for MySQL - we have done hardly any testing.
All we know is it runs on our systems - SuSE 8.0 with Apache 1.3.37, PHP 4.3.1, MySQL 3.23.55 - and on servers of the provider this page is hosted by (same versions).
PHPchara downloads are available from the SourceForge files area
Fixes:
- The whole thing was broken. This happens when you fix something and then
don't bother to test anything again.
PHPchara 1.2a (removed again)
Fixes:
- Fixed management of table creating and deleting when switching statistics
on/off and when changing the type of the test.
- Other minor bugfixes we found after we actually checked what we had done
so far.
PHPchara 1.2 (not released)
Changes:
- It is now possible to use PHPchara to make a different kind of tests -
instead of testing for characters, groups can be defined with several
categories - see the README.TXT for more information.
- Statistics can be sorted (and the sorting changed by clicking on the
heading) and are also available for new "groups" function.
- Added internationalization support - included is English as the default
language, and German and formal ("Sie") German.
- Removed [chara]name[/chara] syntax BBcode - too many possible problems with
non-ASCII characters or even some HTML special characters.
- Different titles for the different pages.
Fixes:
- Pages using URLs with GET parameters were not using HTML compliant &
but just &
- More comments in the code (at least in some places). I count this as a fix
because it is something that still needs fixing in many places...
- Many internal improvements including new code to read & write config and
DB error message output.
PHPchara 1.1 (tar.gz)
Changes:
- Added statistics of results by character and individual answers, linked from the result page. (New options to control whether statistics data is collected & shown and if statistics are sorted.)
- Added [url='...'][/url] and [url="..."][/url] tags so URLs with ] in them can be used
- Added [img]...[/img] tag
- Changed to use BBcode with all texts, including questions and answers
Fixes:
- Fixed that " in options caused MySQL errors (missing escaping)
- Fixed other misc. bugs
The project is currently run by two people:
- jan (Jan Beinerdorf)
- Expert for: PHP, HTML, MySQL, silly comments, bad English
- schloeme (Peter Schlömer)
- Expert for: PHP, HTML, MySQL,
<p> affinity, <br> hostility,
We will probably allow read access to our Subversion repository later. Currently, the releases are not much more than development versions anyway.
Publisher of this website (information required by § 6 Teledienstgesetz)
- Address
- Peter Schlömer
Grünberger Str. 3
D-51491 Overath
GERMANY
- Contact
- E-Mail schloeme@phpchara.scheissname.de
