I am working on a user interface, "dashboard" of sorts which has some div boxes on it, which contain information relevant to the current logged in user. Their calendar, a todo list, and some statistics dynamically pulled from a google spreadsheet.
I found here:
http://code.google.com/apis/spreadsheets/data/3.0/reference.html#CellFeed
that specific cells can be requested from the sheet with a url like this:
spreadsheets.google.com/feeds/cells/0AnhvV5acDaAvdDRvVmk1bi02WmJBeUtBak5xMmFTNEE/1/public/basic/R3C2
I briefly looked into Zend GData, but it seemed way more complex that what I was trying to do.
So instead I wrote two php functions: (in hours.php)
1.) does a file_get_contents() of the generated url, based on the parameters row, column, and sheet
2.) uses the first in a loop to find which column number is associated with the given name.
So basically I do an ajax request using jQuery that looks like this:
// begin js function
function ajaxStats(fullname)
{
$.ajax({
url: "lib/dashboard.stats.php?name="+fullname,
cache: false,
success: function(html){
document.getElementById("stats").innerHTML = html;
}
});
}
// end js function
// begin file hours.php
<?php
function getCol($name)
{
$r=1;
$c=2;
while(getCell($r,$c,1) != $name)
{ $c++; }
return $c;
}
function getCell($r, $c, $sheet)
{
$baseurl = "http://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds/cells/";
$spreadsheet = "0AnhvV5acDaAvdDRvVmk1bi02WmJBeUtBak5xMmFTNEE/";
$sheetID = $sheet . "/";
$vis = "public/";
$proj = "basic/";
$cell = "R".$r."C".$c;
$url = $baseurl . $spreadsheet . $sheetID . $vis . $proj . $cell . "";
$xml = file_get_contents($url);
//Sometimes the data is not xml formatted,
//so lets try to remove the url
$urlLen = strlen($url);
$xmlWOurl = substr($xml, $urlLen);
//then find the Z (in the datestamp, assuming its always there)
$posZ = strrpos($xmlWOurl, "Z");
//then substr from z2end
$data = substr($xmlWOurl, $posZ + 1);
//if the result has more than ten characters then something went wrong
//And most likely it is xml formatted
if(strlen($data) > 10)
{
//Asuming we have xml
$datapos = strrpos($xml,"<content type='text'>");
$datapos += 21;
$datawj = substr($xml, $datapos);
$endcont = strpos($datawj,"</content>");
return substr($datawj, 0,$endcont);
}
else
return $data;
}
?>
//End hours.php
//Begin dashboard.stats.php
<?php
session_start();
// This file is requested using ajax from the main dashboard because it takes so long to load,
// as to not slow down the usage of the rest of the page.
if (!empty($_GET['name']))
{
include "hours.php";
// GetCollumn of which C#R1 = users name
$col = getCol($_GET['name']);
// then get cell from each of the sheets for that user,
// assuming they are in the same column of each sheet
$s1 = getcell(3, $col, 1);
$s2 = getcell(3, $col, 2);
$s3 = getcell(3, $col, 3);
$s4 = getcell(3, $col, 4);
// Store my loot in the session varibles,
// so next time I want this, I don't need to fetch it
$_SESSION['fhrs'] = $s1;
$_SESSION['fdol'] = $s2;
$_SESSION['chrs'] = $s3;
$_SESSION['bhrs'] = $s4;
}
//print_r($_SESSION);
?>
<!-- and finally output the information formated for the widget-->
<strong>You have:</strong><br/>
<ul style="padding-left: 10px;">
<li> <strong><?php echo $_SESSION['fhrs']; ?></strong> fundraising hours<br/></li>
<li>earned $<strong><?php echo $_SESSION['fdol']; ?></strong> fundraising<br/></li>
<li> <strong><?php echo $_SESSION['chrs']; ?></strong> community service hours<br/></li>
<li> <strong><?php echo $_SESSION['bhrs']; ?></strong> build hours <br/></li>
</ul>
//end dashboard.stats.php
I think that where I am loosing my 4 secs is the while loop in getCol() [hours.php]
How can I improve this, and reduce my loading time?
Should I just scrap this, and go to Zend GData?
If it is that while loop, should i try to store each users column number from the spreadsheet in the user database that also authenticates login?
