Re: php patch

[Omar Abo-Namous <merlin12345 at gmx dot de>]

On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 01:39:54 -0700 (PDT), Nadim Shaikli wrote:
> --- M Elzubeir <zubeir at gmail dot com> wrote:
>> On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 17:03:48 -0700 (PDT), Nadim Shaikli
>>> I highly recommend you deploy this, in a phantom dir if you like, and have
>>> a few of us use it.  Once all looks fine and we can verify that the count
>>> is being done correctly, things are being saved properly, mails are being
>>> sent, errors are being caught, etc (ie. post some serious testing), we can
>>> go live with it.  The testing db and contents post testing will simply be
>>> discarded.
>>
>> Already have:
>> http://www.arabeyes.org/~elzubeir/www/
i didn't notice this was about the vote.. :)

>
> OK, I did a bit of snooping in the code - the web resulted in your previous
> comments and here is what I've come up with so-far (I hand edited the mysql
> data entries to get it to result in some data :-).  I really doubt Omar can
> remedy all these issues and so its M.Elzubeir and I on this from here on in
> so we can deploy this mechanism on the 14th,
>
> 1. All date checks internally should happen using the UTC timezone
> (are there day spill issue - hope not).
> 2. There is an 'opendate' which gets checked in nominate.php yet its
> not set anywhere --> not sure of the intent of the variable, but I'd
> guess since we have a start_date and end_data (for nominations I'm
> guessing) this variable could be more aptly renamed to vote_date.
start_ and end_date are for the vote itself. opendate was meant to be the date
until which the doors are open for nomination. i hope that covers your next
three questions.

> 3. I think start_date and end_date are there for the actual election day
> event, not sure why there is a multi-day span (future thinking ?),
> do we really need it as such ?
> 4. Rename (if I understood this correctly) start_date and end_date to
> nominate_date_start and nominate_date_end (or similar) if that makes
> since.
> 5. Include a 'vote_date' (as noted above) as part of the election
> management page.

> 6. There really should be a 'nominate yourself' link possibly in the
> 'right menu' link on any valid election.
Actually there should be! if an election is coming up (ie it's still open for
nominations) and you have your cvs-commits and are logged in, there should be a
link "nominate yourself".

> 7. All table entries should come up when one presses on the nominate and
> a status column should note 'open/closed' for each election in the table
> with open ones allowing checked people to nominate themselves.
does that make sense? When do you want to have more than one election at once??

> 8. Make as many of the dates pull-down menus as possible (to ease entry).
that i will do isa.

> 9. autoincrement (on id) is 3, should be 1
> 10. In the nominate yourself page, it should note a bit more details on when
> the deadlines (for nomination as well as the vote) are, etc.
> 11. In the nominate page, change 'Send nomination' to 'Enter Nomination'
> 12. Once a person enter him/herself as a nominee, one should be able to remove
> him/herself (or change their campaign plea, etc).  It would be best to
> include a link (per person) in the admin.php page (which lists all
> people on the bottom) so that people can click on their names and change
> things.
But you can't get into admin.php unless you are core as i understand it. So that
wouldn't make sense??

> 13. Prior to elections there needs to be a 'vote' or similar link so that
> people
> can read the various nominee's campaign pleas (a list of all nominees and
> a link to each person's blurb that they entered).  This same link when the
> time is right on election day will let people vote.
But by the time the voters are able to see the nomination blurbs, the nominees
shouldn't be able to change them.

> 14. There are 2 mysql tables (elections and votes) I might have missed the
> part
> when they kinda link to each other.  In other words, the votes should
> include that particular elections id or similar so that we can have
> multiple future elections.
the votes-table does actually include election_id.

> 15. start/end_date use the format yyyy-mm-dd_hh:mm whereas the opendate uses
> yyyy_mm_dd_hh:mm (is bug is apparent in the vote.php line 31/32)
> 16. The voting page didn't give one the option to read the various nominee's
> campaign plea/promises/blurb.
oops

> 17. The email sent looks good except the 'date' field was not filled-in
> 18. I tried to regenerate the md5sum post getting the email and didn't know
> what to exclude - it might be a good idea to note "--vote begin" and
> "--vote end" (non-inclusive) and to use everything in between.  Don't
> use tabs either and instead rely on spaces (to ease the recreation of
> md5sum in case of cut-n-paste).
> 19. Oddly enough voter name was ' Shaikli' without any mention of my first
> name.  Ah, line 101/102 in vote.php is missing a 'u' in 'userinfo' :-)
> 20. It would be nice to tell people on the webpage (when the data is
> confirmed - ie. when mail is sent) the email address the mail was sent
> to in case people forget which email is in their preferences or better
> yet display it while they are voting and give 'em a chance to change it
> by linking to the people.php page.
> 21. Note sure about the usage of the 'open' variable.  Plus the > and <
> compares should really be = compare on vote_date.
The election is only for one day??? and even if, the two dates start and end
include the time. So you really have a span, in which you can vote. i think this
is consistent??!

If i change something, should i make a patch file to the original cvs or from
the files, i've allready changed and submitted?

Salam.

Omar