Question

In one of my web application in php there is a contest section . It contains a multiple choice 10 questions , Each has 4 options .

After user filling the form I am saving the answer as comma separated values in a db . like follows:

user   |    answer
-------------------------------------
112    |  1,7,8,9,8,5,2,3,6,7,9,6

I got a answer key same as the use’s filled answer key ..

What is the best logical method for evaluate the users input and find out the highest scored user?

Answer 1

As mentioned in the comments, this isn’t the best way to store data, but I’d evaluate like this:

$query = mysql_query("select * from `table` where 1",CONNECTION_IDENTIFIER) or die("die message");
 $answer_key = array(answer1,answer2,etc);
 $high_score = 0;
 $high_scorer= "";
 while($r=mysql_fetch_array($query)){
    $users_answers = explode(',',$r['answer']);
    $user_score = 0;
    for($i=0;$i<10;$i++){
        if ($answer_key[$i]==$users_answers[$i]){
            $user_score++;
        }
    }
     if ($user_score > $high_score){
            $high_score =  $user_score;
            $high_scorer = $r['user'];
     }
 }

 echo "High scorer is $high_scorer with $high_score points";