MC Scheduler Management—View MC Scheduler

This script is called View-Scheduler.php

This utility displays all the caregivers scheduled to give care for two weeks, this week and next week. The care needers are the column names across the top of the schedule, while the 48 half-hour time slots are listed down the left side of the schedule. Only one day is displayed at a time. There are 14 convenient links at the top of the screen that lead to each of the 14 days in 2 weeks.

The MC Scheduler is a caregiving scheduler for kids and/or elders. It contains the application utilities listed above. There is a utility called Setup Scheduler which lets you enter the names of the kids and/or elders needing care. Then it saves 3 files, one with the names of the care needers, one with the names of the caregivers, and one with a blank 2-week schedule. The View Scheduler utility lets you see the schedule, with no editing.

Before you use the Edit MC Scheduler option on the main menu, you'll need to get everyone together and figure out the caregiving schedule which lasts two weeks, so you'll need to figure out who cares for whom. You'll see that the schedules are set up as half hour slots and cover 24 hours a day. When you first see the schedule it will be set up with two X characters for all slots for the whole two weeks. X means "no care needed." For most MCs or families or groups (or even babysitting co-ops), the slots from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. will be left with the Xs (parents are "watching over" their kids by sleeping in their own rooms—but still available), so you'll need to set up caregivers for 7 in the morning to 9 at night, mostly, since after that we assume the kids and care-needing elders will be asleep. Of course, also in the daytime will be Xs for when kids are at school or soccer practice or music lessons or preschool or whatever. So even if kids are sleeping over at a different home in your group, it is assumed there are parents sleeping in a nearby room, available as needed.

The reason there are Xs over Xs and—once you fill in the slots—names over names, is that the primary caregiver is on top and the secondary caregiver is on the bottom. See Why Register for an MC? to see why caregiver choice is important—the kid should be able to choose which of these two people will care for him/her. The kid starts with the primary caregiver and chooses to switch to the secondary caregiver if he wants to. The best place for the caregiving is a space set aside for it. This allows kids to play with other kids in their group, and the chosen (primary or secondary) caregiver will be there, playing with or talking with the kids as they wish or—more often—reading a book or doing something on a computer while the kids play together.

The editing of the schedule is simple. Select one of the caregivers from the dropdown menu in Edit MC Scheduler, and click him or her wherever appropriate on the schedule either on top, as the primary caregiver or on the bottom as the secondary caregiver. Do this for the whole two weeks and then go on to the next caregiver from the dropdown menu, until all slots are filled as needed. Yes, the first scheduling meeting will be a long one. Bring snacks!

Even though we designed the Scheduler for MCs (microcommunities), there would be nothing to stop babysitting co-ops from using it. Most co-ops think in terms of one caregiver for so many kids. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Public Health Association recommend child-caregiver ratios of 3:1 for children from birth to 12 months, 4:1 for children from 13 to 30 months, 5:1 for children from 31 to 35 months, 7:1 for 3-year-olds, and 8:1 for 4-year-olds and older. We agree, but feel that there needs to be secondary caregivers as well—for backup. Like we say, the kids should be able to choose which of these two people will care for them.

On to the code: The first section is at the start of the script. First, we use the checkid.php script to ensure that the session id variable is set, and send the user to register-with-captcha.php if it is not. Then we put the session variable 'username' into $U—we will be checking that it is set in a second. Then we define a named constant '_NODIRECTACCESS'. We include the config.php file (in the includes folder) which uses the PHP defined() function to check on this constant. If it is not set, we are thrown out of the config.php file like yesterday's trash.

Next we check if the session variables 'groupname', 'username', and 'userid' are set. If not, we are sent to the login-to-mc.php script. We make sure $U is still equal to the session variable 'username', that it is not an empty string, and that it's at least 6 characters long or . . . you guessed it . . . the login script. We make sure the session id is set and send them away if not.

The reason we are willing to use JavaScript to send visitors away is that none of our scripts will work without it. One cannot register, enter data, get from here to there, etc., in most of our scripts without it. What serious web surfer turns off JavaScript? In case you were not aware, many sites rely totally on JavaScript for menu functioning and some of their scripts. And what about data entry? In case you didn't know it, it is a huge convenience for the user because of the way it does input validation. A good site will validate in JavaScript as well as PHP. When the JavaScript data validation script catches unacceptable input, it can simply send focus to the input box where the bad input happened, the user fixes it, and the script is submitted. But if JavaScript is disabled, the user gets sent to PHP data validation which catches the bad data and sends the user back to the input form to redo all input from scratch. The JavaScript data validation script will not make a user restart, if well written. If you have experienced restarting data entry in a long form due to an accidental character, you know exactly what we are talking about. It's maddening! And a good way to get users to surf away from your site forever. If a person turns off THE major browser scripting language just because of a miniscule chance of encountering a scripting exploit on some web page, rather than installing good anti-spyware and anti-virus software, his Internet experience overall will be greatly diminished. Many sites have no alternatives to their script-enabled navigation, so the person is 100% screwed on those sites. But even on those with the alternative, it is always cumbersome and awkward. Besides, the scheduler editing script requires AJAX which in turn needs JavaScript, and if you cannot edit the schedule, it's useless. Point taken?

Next, we declare a JavaScript function d(page){location.href="View-Scheduler.php?page="+page;} This function is the navigation script. When the user clicks on a link such as <a HREF="#" onClick=
"d(4);">Wed</a>, a 4 is sent as a parameter value to the d() function. The 4 gets dumped into the variable page, and then the View-Scheduler.php page is reloaded but with a query string sending the page number to PHP.

Now we use PHP GET to check if the page links have been clicked. GET is a 'superglobal', or automatic global, variable that precludes one from needing to declare global in functions, since it is available anywhere in the script. If no value was GETed, the default is set at 1. If there is a page value that has been chosen via a clicked link, the selected page is loaded via MySQL's SELECT command. If the page desired is 4, then the variable $p gets a 4 and we select everything in the table where Day=4. There are 50 records per page, so all content where N=151 to 200 (which is the same as records 151 to 200) is loaded since this is the 4th set of 50 records in the table. The 48 half-hour time slots in a day are displayed down the left side (with the label Time at the top), while all the kids and/or elders are the labels of the columns, across the top. For ease of programming, the kid names table related to this specific user is consulted and the number of records and the names are gotten using mysql_num_rows() and mysql_fetch_array() and the names go into an array by use of array_push(). This helps with displaying.

The day of the week and the date (always the 49th and 50th record in each 50-record day) are found next and stuck into the page title. When you see all the OR operators in the code, this is because these are general scripts that will work regardless of which of the 14 pages it is. In the case of the page being 4, records 199 and 200 are where the day and date will be located. The reason the page title also contains the user name is to reassure the user that he or she has the right schedule, since there can be plenty of other users using the same scheduler application. One user name goes with each scheduler, and even the table names themselves get the user name prepended to them. One user name corresponds to one MC/group, since the administrator uses a user name he chooses when he registers his group.

This script below is called View-Scheduler.php

<?php
include_once"checkid.php";
$U=$_SESSION['username'];
define('_NODIRECTACCESS', TRUE);
include_once"includes/config.php";
if (!isset($_SESSION['groupname']) || !isset($_SESSION['userid']) || !isset($_SESSION['username']) || $_SESSION['username']<>$U || !isset($U) || $U=="" || strlen($U)<6 || !isset($_SESSION['sessionid'])){echo '<script language="javascript">alert("Please login, then select MC Scheduler."); window.location = "login-to-mc.php";</script>';}
?>

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>View MC Scheduler</title>
<meta name="description" content="View MC Scheduler">
<meta name="keywords" content="View MC Scheduler,MC,MC Scheduler">

<script language="javascript">

function d(page){location.href="View-Scheduler.php?page="+page;}
</script>
<style>
.z{width:94px;height:30px;max-width:94px;min-width:94px;max-height:30px;min-height:30px;font-size:13px;
background-color:#eee;overflow:hidden;white-space:nowrap;font-family:"Times New Roman", Times, serif;}
.zz{padding:7px 7px 7px 17px}
.t{font-weight:bold;color:blue;font-size:24px;position:absolute;top:6px;left:200px}
.d{font-weight:bold;color:black;font-size:16px;position:absolute;top:46px;left:100px}
.table{position:absolute;top:100px;left:100px}
</style>
</head>

<body>

<div class="d">        
         
         
         
         
          
<a HREF="http://www.thebiganswer.info/MC-Scheduler.php">Return to MC Scheduler Management</a><BR><B>This week:</b> <a HREF="#" onClick="d(1);">Sun</a> <a HREF="#" onClick="d(2);">Mon</a> <a HREF="#" onClick="d(3);">Tue</a> <a HREF="#" onClick="d(4);">Wed</a> <a HREF="#" onClick="d(5);">Thur</a> <a HREF="#" onClick="d(6);">Fri</a> <a HREF="#" onClick="d(7);">Sat</a> <B>      Next week:</b> <a HREF="#" onClick="d(8);">Sun</a> <a HREF="#" onClick="d(9);">Mon</a> <a HREF="#" onClick="d(10);">Tue</a> <a HREF="#" onClick="d(11);">Wed</a> <a HREF="#" onClick="d(12);">Thur</a> <a HREF="#" onClick="d(13);">Fri</a> <a HREF="#" onClick="d(14);">Sat</a> </div>

<?php

$p=$_GET["page"];
if (!isset($p)){$p=1;}
$a=$U."_kids";
$ar=array();
$nm = mysql_query("SELECT username FROM $a") or die(mysql_error());
$nb = mysql_num_rows($nm);
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($nm)) {
array_push ($ar, $row[0]);}
$n=$nb+1;
$a=$U."_scheduler";
$res = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM $a WHERE Day='$p' LIMIT 48") or die(mysql_error());
echo "<div class='table'><table border='1'>";
echo "<tr> <th><div class='z'>Time</div></th>";
for($i = 1; $i < $n; $i++){
echo "<th><div class='z'>".$ar[$i-1]."</div></th>";}
echo "</tr>";
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($res)){
echo "<tr><td><div class='z'><div class='zz'>";
echo $row['Time'];
echo "</div></div></td>";
for($i = 1; $i < $n; $i++){
echo "<td><div class='z'>".$row['kid'.$i]."</div></td>";}
echo "</tr>";
}

echo "</table></div>";

$res = mysql_query("SELECT Time FROM $a WHERE Day='$p' AND (N='50' OR N='100' OR N='150' OR N='200' OR N='250' OR N='300' OR N='350' OR N='400' OR N='450' OR N='500' OR N='550' OR N='600' OR N='650' OR N='700') LIMIT 1") or die(mysql_error());
$row = mysql_fetch_array($res);
$datee=$row['Time'];

$res = mysql_query("SELECT Time FROM $a WHERE Day='$p' AND (N='49' OR N='99' OR N='149' OR N='199' OR N='249' OR N='299' OR N='349' OR N='399' OR N='449' OR N='499' OR N='549' OR N='599' OR N='649' OR N='699') LIMIT 1") or die(mysql_error());
$row = mysql_fetch_array($res);
$dayy=$row['Time'];

echo '<div class="t" align="center">View MC Scheduler, '.$U.', '.$dayy.' '.$datee.'</div>';

mysql_close();

?>

<script language="javascript">

var page = <?php echo json_encode($p); ?>;

</script>

</body>
</html>

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MC Scheduler Management—View MC Scheduler