bracket-manager - basic implementation question

[xDoogie]

Hi Drarig29, hope you are well. I'm brand new to coding and still have a lot to learn so forgive my basic questions. As one of my first projects I wanted to create a simple site for my group of friends where we can create a tournament and then track results. I have the creation bit done where host specifies the Name, Nr of teams, Nr of Games each teams has to play against one another and which mode: single or double elimination. Once created my friends can click on a link and add their teams to that tournament. All that information is stored in mySQL. Now what I was thinking about is, when the time of the tournament is up, the host presses Start tournament, and with that, the bracket structure is generated. My question is: is your project too complex for such basic project and need ? :) I have been looking for some ideas and came across it, but not sure how to implement it in a basic php / javascript code. ANy tips ? Thank you for any feedback. Have a great day.

[Drarig29]

Hi @xDoogie!

My question is: is your project too complex for such basic project and need ?

In itself, I don't think the project is too complex. However, interfacing it with mySQL the right way (with multiple tables, primary keys, foreign keys, etc.) could be biting off more than you can chew. At the risk of giving up your project 😅

I would give you the following options:

Option 1 (preferred)

If you really want to stick with your mySQL database (I can understand that), then you could do something simple: have a single tournament table with (at least) 2 columns.

• tournamentId (a number): ID of a parent tournament
• data (TEXT or BLOB ; cf. this StackOverflow answer): JSON string containing all the state of the tournament: stages, groups, rounds, matches...

You would have to use the following storage implementation: https://www.npmjs.com/package/brackets-memory-db

Do you want to edit a match? Then you can do the following:

• You have to know its tournament ID
  • For this, either you can create an association table linking tournament IDs and match IDs
  • Or you could keep the tournament ID in the URL of your javascript website (i.e. "front-end"), and have URLs like https://mywebsite.com/tournaments/{tournamentId}
• Get the full state of the tournament and load it in the InMemoryDatabase
• Update the match
• Save the in-memory database (aka. the JSON object) in your tournament table

Note: this is NOT a good practice, but as a beginner it's totally OK to start like this.

Option 2

I don't think it's a good idea, but you could also just store the JSON data in a JSON file.

You would use this storage implementation: https://www.npmjs.com/package/brackets-json-db

Option 3 (can be too hard)

Totally embrace SQL and go the "multiple tables way".

I think some people did it, and you can find some information here: #111

Option 4 (unreasonable)

Change database and go NoSQL.

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Don't be afraid to ask more details 😉

[xDoogie]

Wow, thank you very much for your response. I was not expecting so much detail. So what would be the "right way" of implementing this? I may as well learn the correct process :) My second question is, which elements I would need to achieve my goal ? I'm asking about the bracket-manager, bracket-viewer, some storage option. Apologies for all the questions but since you were so kind to answer I will just try my luck :D Let me know if it is too much and I will stop haha. Thank you.

[Drarig29]

The "right way" given the constraint that you already have a SQL database, would be to reuse it (debatable). And if you want to be able to query matches directly, then you should go with the "multiple tables" approach: Option 3. But as I said, it won't be easy at all...

which elements I would need to achieve my goal?

This documentation page should help you getting started: https://drarig29.github.io/brackets-docs/getting-started/

But for Option 3, the "storage option" you need is a custom one! Hence why it may be complicated.
Read this comment for more information: #111 (comment)

Basically, you can inspire yourself from this partial implementation: https://github.com/Drarig29/brackets-storage/blob/master/brackets-sql-db/index.js

And I'd love that you share your implementation with the community once you have put one together. 😄