Membership Maintenance

[ca143508]

Hi guys,

I have been working on this code on the weekend for my club. It is no-where near completed but I thought I would share it all the same. I manage my own martial arts club and like to have all the information about my members at my finger tips.

This little app will keep track of my members personal information, family information, payment history, notes about them, their grading history, measurements for uniforms etc, various statistics (ie/ how low they can do the splits, how fast they run the 40 mtrs) etc etc etc.

I don't really know how to program so it is a bit hit and miss. So far though it is performing every function I want it to.

If you want to have a play, just put the Members.ini file in the same directory and your good to go!

Cheers,

Michael.

[sandyd]

Gui looks nice.

You may find that your INI file will grow quite large depending on the number of members.

Might be an idea to provide a listview to view the members on another tab then you could sort on any field you wanted to.

I would think about changing how you store the secure password, maybe ask for it when you first run the program and store in the registry with some encryption etc.

Otherwise, nice script

Edited January 22, 2007 by sandyd

[ca143508]

Good tips, thanks. I'm not too sure how the list view works so I might hit the helpfile and make a few changes. Thanks for taking the time to have a look.

Cheers,

Michael

[Gene]

Gui looks nice.

You may find that your INI file will grow quite large depending on the number of members.

Might be an idea to provide a listview to view the members on another tab then you could sort on any field you wanted to.

I would think about changing how you store the secure password, maybe ask for it when you first run the program and store in the registry with some encryption etc.

Otherwise, nice script

Hi, it is my understanding from Valik that INI files as datadases are quite unstable when they exceed a certain size. I'm not sure of the exact size, but between 200 and 300 items sounds familiar.

Of course you could split up the records into smaller INI files based on the alphabet, but that would be kind of kludgy. You could jump into one of the flavors of SQL and associated UDFs to be found on the forum. This would probably be harder in the short term, but better in the longer term.

If you don't have very many fields per record and don't expect more the 500 to 700 records you could keep the records in a sorted flat file and load the entire thing into RAM on startup for whatever management is needed. Be sure to automatically save the file each time changes are made.

[Gene]

Having looked at your files and GUI (which is nice) for the near term and in order to flatten the learning curve somewhat, you could use multiplr INI files to get around their size limitations. As I said before thats not the best method in the long term, but how many new things do you want to learn at the same time. In your current record's fieldset there is little need for relational capability. You could have just 26 INI files if you name them with single letters or a potential of 676 if you used 2 letters to name them. It would undoubtedly be less because the 2 letters would be the first 2 from the members last name. Even so, some of the INIs could be very crowded. The potential number of files using 3 letters doesn't bear thinking about.

A flat file is probably easier to manage than multiple INI files. A flat file is one where the data is laidout in records instead of fields.

Example of a flat file record:

KeyField|Address|Suburb|State|Postcode|Phone|Fax|Mobile|Photo|Payments|MotherName|MotherMobile|Mothe

rWork|FatherName|FatherMobile|FatherWork|MotherWorkPhone|MotherMobilePhone|FatherWorkPhone|FatherMob

ilePhone|Notes

The vertical characters between the fields are AutoIt's default data dividers. Unless a file is HUGE you can load it all at once, then manage it in RAM. There is some risk in that. You can also manage the file from disk, there are many built-in functions and furnished UDFs to help you manage your data in RAM or on disk. Flat files are very stable, the last time I checked you could have about 4000 characters on a row, it may be higher now.

The then there is SQL in the long term for lots of data, it's the way to go.

There is much to be said for investing time in all 3 methods starting with INI files. The only way to really know when and why to use or not use a method is when you have used them before.

This could turn into a really cool project.

[ca143508]

Guys - Thanks very much for your suggestions. Due to my newbie status and the fact that I am just learning how to use many of the functions of Autoit, I have removed this app from the forum. A "helpful" person downloaded the code and polietly pointed out that I have placed my forum password in the code (encrypted as suggested earlier). They then proceeded to login to my account, change the code of the app to have the clear text password and then polietly notify me that they knew my password.

I agree, it is my own fault. Guess I was having what you would call a blonde day the day I uploaded the new code. But then again I had hopped that sharing the code in a group with such brilliant members, that it would not have come to that. I will continue to work on the app and will happily share it's progress throughout the forum and provide assistance to any members who ask for it, but I won't be placing any source code up again. The fact that anyone can take advantage of someones gullability as a new programmer and alter their work - it's just not worth it.

Thanks again for your help and I'll let you know how the app is going.

Cheers,

Mike.

[Gene]

Guys - Thanks very much for your suggestions. Due to my newbie status and the fact that I am just learning how to use many of the functions of Autoit, I have removed this app from the forum. A "helpful" person downloaded the code and polietly pointed out that I have placed my forum password in the code (encrypted as suggested earlier). They then proceeded to login to my account, change the code of the app to have the clear text password and then polietly notify me that they knew my password.

I agree, it is my own fault. Guess I was having what you would call a blonde day the day I uploaded the new code. But then again I had hopped that sharing the code in a group with such brilliant members, that it would not have come to that. I will continue to work on the app and will happily share it's progress throughout the forum and provide assistance to any members who ask for it, but I won't be placing any source code up again. The fact that anyone can take advantage of someones gullability as a new programmer and alter their work - it's just not worth it.

Thanks again for your help and I'll let you know how the app is going.

Cheers,

Mike.

This is a near public place, we are all responsible for our own screwups. I agree that the result of your screwup was unpleasant, but what if they hadn't told you, what if they had kept quiet, logged on as you and caused trouble in 20 or 30 threads? You got out light. That said, if you want much help from the Forum, you're going to have to post source code. People have to see what you're doing to be able to see what is wrong.

[ca143508]

This is a near public place, we are all responsible for our own screwups. I agree that the result of your screwup was unpleasant, but what if they hadn't told you, what if they had kept quiet, logged on as you and caused trouble in 20 or 30 threads? You got out light. That said, if you want much help from the Forum, you're going to have to post source code. People have to see what you're doing to be able to see what is wrong.

Understood.

[gseller]

Do you have the zipped up package so I can check it out? I have need for something like this... Thank You