Creating online alphabetized high scores

[brett]

Hi,
I am interested in making an online high score table that displays scores in an alphabetical list (I am a teacher and want to use game scores as a grading tool). I have studied the tutorial on how to make online high scores but want to add several functions to make it useful for teachers. I am wondering if these are possible but I'm lost on how to accomplish them. Here are some of the things I'd like to be able to do with the online high score table:
1. Retrieve student names (first and last) from the Flash application. These would be inputted by individual students before playing the game/ taking the quiz.
2. Alphabetize the students (with their scores) so that they are in alphabetical order by last name on the online score table.
3. Be able to use fields that students fill in (Teacher name, period, school name, etc.) to create separate score tables for different teachers/periods.
4. The score tables described above would be accessible to the appropriate teacher using username/password protection.

The tables will be stored on my website. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. I think it could be very useful to teachers (myself included).
Thanks,
Brett

[DavidN]

Hi Brett,

You can submit anything to a PHP script in the same manner as described in the tutorial - constructing the URL to send to using additional data from the game. For example, using the Get object:

Get page "http://www.example.com/submit.php?teacher=" + Edittext$("Teacher Name") + "&period=" + Edittext$("Period") + "&school=" + Edittext$("School Name")

- would produce something like the URL http://www.example.com/submit.php?teacher=Harry Mason&period=5&school=Grange Hill (where Teacher Name, Period and School Name are edit boxes within the application).

You would also need to set up the PHP script you're communicating with to handle this data and store it in the table - this and the alphabetization of the student names would be done on the SQL side (all you need to do to sort the result of a query is to add ORDER BY [field name]).

Username and password protection to access a page is also possible by writing another page to accept the password and display the scores, but altogether it's difficult to give an overview without delving into the details, as together these become a decent-sized project.

[brett]

Thanks David,
I'm going to play around with this and see if I can get it to work. I appreciate the help,
Brett