Question

I’m building a website with points system, similar to Stackoverflow;

This is the code I’m using to display top users (for all time):

SELECT id, username, active, points 
FROM users 
WHERE active='1' 
ORDER BY points DESC

But how can I show the top users in 24 hours (also points)?

Answer 1

You would have to make a special table that would record when (and how many) points the user received.

EDIT

E.g. table points

user_id   time         awarded_points
-------------------------------------
1         1298745681   10
...

Then you just ask for the points awarded today with WHERE time > UNIX_TIMESTAMP(CURDATE()) or in the last 24 hours WHERE time > UNIX_TIMESTAMP()-24*3600.

Example use:

SELECT u.id, u.username, u.active, SUM(p.awarded_points) AS points
FROM points AS p
LEFT JOIN users AS u ON u.id = p.user_id
WHERE time > UNIX_TIMESTAMP(CURDATE())
AND u.active = '1'
GROUP BY p.user_id
ORDER BY points DESC

I’d also suggest adding a LIMIT to the query, especially if your site grows big.