Virtual stock trading

CO3014 Computer Science Project Final Report Virtual Stock Trading Student: María Mercedes García Martínez Supervisor: Dr. Stanley P. Y. Fung Project Report submitted to the University of Leicester in Partial Fulfillment for the degree of Bachelor of Science May 2009 Department of Computer Science, University of Leicester This project could not have been realized without the help of some persons. Firstly, I am grateful to my supervisor Stanley Fung to guide me in the project and the University of Leicester to give me the chance to do this work. Moreover, I am also grateful to my family and friends to help me to decide to make the project. i Table of Contents 1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Aims ......................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Objectives ................................................................................................................ 4 1.3 Background Research .............................................................................................. 5 1.3.1 Trade ................................................................................................................. 5 1.3.2 Database ............................................................................................................ 6 1.3.3 Uniform Server ................................................................................................. 6 1.3.4 PHP ................................................................................................................... 6 1.3.5 MySQL ............................................................................................................. 6 1.3.6 Apache .............................................................................................................. 7 1.3.7 Graphics ............................................................................................................ 7 1.3.8 PDF files ........................................................................................................... 7 1.3.9 RSS ................................................................................................................... 7 1.3.10 CSS ................................................................................................................. 7 1.4 Literature Survey ..................................................................................................... 8 2 Planning and Timescales ................................................................................................ 9 3 Project Core .................................................................................................................. 11 3.1 Technical and Engineering Background Information ........................................... 11 3.1.1 Internet, www and browsers ........................................................................... 11 3.1.2 JpGraph ........................................................................................................... 13 3.1.3 FPDF ............................................................................................................... 14 3.1.4 RSS ................................................................................................................. 15 3.2 Software Requirements Specifications .................................................................. 17 3.2.1 Introduction .................................................................................................... 17 3.2.1.1 Purpose .................................................................................................. 17 3.2.1.2 Project features ...................................................................................... 17 3.2.1.3 Definitions ............................................................................................. 17 3.2.2 System features ............................................................................................... 20 3.2.2.1 Functionalities ....................................................................................... 20 3.2.2.2 Function requirements ........................................................................... 20 3.3 Design .................................................................................................................... 21 3.3.1 Use Case Diagram .......................................................................................... 21 3.3.1 Entity-Relationship Model ............................................................................. 26 3.3.2 Directories ...................................................................................................... 27 3.3.3 Interface .......................................................................................................... 29 3.3.4 Example of a Demonstration .......................................................................... 35 3.4 Implementation details .......................................................................................... 39 3.4.1 Tools ............................................................................................................... 39 3.4.2 Code explanation ............................................................................................ 44 3.5 Software Testing and Test Sets ............................................................................. 64 4 Critical Appraisal .......................................................................................................... 65 5 Bibliography and Citations ........................................................................................... 66 5.1 Literary Sources ..................................................................................................... 66 5.2 Web Sources .......................................................................................................... 67 6 Appendix ...................................................................................................................... 68 6.1 Database with an example of data ......................................................................... 68 6.2 Queries to create the Database ............................................................................... 70 ii DECLARATION All sentences or passages quoted in this report, if from other people’s work have been specifically acknowledged by clear cross referencing to author, work and page(s). I understand that failure to do so amounts to plagiarism and will be considered as grounds for failure in this module and the degree examination as a whole. Name:María Mercedes García Martínez Signed: Date:8th May 2009 This project is a web-based software system for virtual stock trading. Users can log in the system and they can buy and sell stocks. The virtual system will permit practise and learn how the trade market works without real money. Virtual Trade uses the technologies such as PHP, JavaScript, CSS, mySQL, Apache, JPGraph, FPDF and RSS. It works in a Uniform Server that includes Apache server, PHP and MySQL. The system records the history of stock prices and provides graphical information tools to present this data. Users will be able to view their personal information, own stocks, transaction history and their current orders to buy and sell and the prices of the stocks. Users can generate PDF files with an abstract of their information. Moreover, they can access with RSS to the purchases and sales. The users will be able to see how the transactions change and how the orders of buying and selling match them. If there is a buyer who wants to buy a stock for a certain amount of money and there is a seller who wants to sell this stock, it will be a transaction. The project has been programmed in PHP using queries in SQL. I practised programming and I researched information about the trade market and the technologies JPGraph and FPDF to add utilities to the project. The project is useful to learn how the trade works. It can be used in Economy lessons. This report tries to explain how the project works and it also explains the tools and technologies used. Moreover, this project is totally done with free as freedom software, you do not have to pay for licences to install of the programms needed. iii 1 Introduction 1.1 Aims The aim of this project is the design and implementation of a web-based software system for virtual stock trading. Users can log in the system and they can buy and sell stocks. The virtual system will permit practise and learn how the trade market works without real money. Moreover, the advantage is that you can practise anywhere because it is an online application and it is open 24 hours a day. The trading prices will be obtained by matching the buying and selling orders, each with their target price, as in the real market. The system will record the history of stock prices and provide graphical tools to present this data. Users will be able to view their personal information, own stocks, transaction history and their current orders to buy and sell and the prices of the stocks. The system is web-based application designed using appropriate technologies and will support a relatively large number of users. The application will show a list of the company’s stocks with their current prices and a list of buyers and sellers with the name of the stocks that they can buy or sell with the number of stocks and their prices. Moreover, users will be able to see the orders sorted. The best order in the case of buy is the major price will appear first and the worst, in this case the lower price will be appear at last and the orders to sell, the lower price will appear first and the major price will be at last. Below is an example of how the system will work. For example, there are 30 stocks of the company Barclays, user1 has 10 stocks, he wants to sell them for each £100 and user2 has 20 stocks, he wants to sell them for each £150. So the Sellers table will be ordered according to the lowest selling price as shown below. And if user3 wants to buy 5 stocks of Barclays for £50 and user4 wants to buy 5 stocks of Barclays for £100, then the Buyers table will be ordered according to the best buying price as shown in the table. The application will show this: 1 Sellers: Company User Price Volume Barclays User1 £100 10 Barclays User2 £150 20 Buyers: Company User Price Volume Barclays User4 £100 5 Barclays User3 £50 5 The system will do that User4 buys 5 stocks and User1 sells 5 stocks to User4. The application shows the following: Sellers: Company User Price Volume Barclays User1 £100 5 Barclays User2 £150 20 2 Buyers: Company User Price Volume Barclays User3 £50 5 Now, if User4 want to sell 5 stocks, he will be able to put the price for them and he will appear in the list of sellers. 3 •The 10th week: I added more functionality and I generated graphics, PDFs and RSS. I tested the project. •The 11th week: I began to write the report. •The 12th week: I finished the final draft of the report. I also did the last test on the project. •The 13th week: The deadline of the project was moved to the next week. In this week I did more test and I corrected details of the report. My timescales were effective and realistic. I thought that I needed more time with the Analysis and Design, as well as with the implementation of the GUI but I used up this time to program. The plan was useful to begin with and to structure the ideas. I modified the implementation details of the plan because I realized that there is a graphic library and it’s better to use this for this project than GNUplot. I also wrote in the plan that the RSS was about the information of the users but I realized that it is better to do RSS about the new purchases and sales. 10 3 Project Core 3.1 Technical and Engineering Background Information Virtual Trading is a project based on web technologies. I needed to search information about some technologies to do this project. All the technologies used are free, that means that you don’t have to buy licenses and you can modify the source code. It was the first time that I did RSS and I used JpGraph, FPDF. I will explain at follows about Internet, www and browsers and after about RSS, JpGraph and FPDF. 3.1.1 Internet, www and browsers “The Internet is the most popular and fastest growing area in computing today. Using Internet, you can do research, participate in online auctions, shop for services and merchandise, post a resume and search for a job, buy and sell stocks, check weather and traffic conditions, obtain medical advice, purchase movie and concert tickets, play online video games, listen to online radio stations, and converse with people worldwide.” Firefox. Introductory Concepts and Techniques [9]. The Internet has become an indispensable tool in a few years for many people. In addition, it is the technology that has grown fastest in history. Below you can see an image showing the growth of the Internet. 11 But you need a good browser to see all the information in the network. Now, there are a lot of browsers. There are two more important browsers: Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Internet Explorer was created a long time ago and it is known in the entire world. The statistics [Montenegro, 2006] tell that Internet Explorer is used to 70%-80% of the people that usually use the Internet and Firefox is used to 10%-15% people that use the Internet, this is not important number but is the first time that Explorer has rivals. The Internet doesn’t have to have rivals it has to be approachable in the entire world. Firefox-Thunderbird [11]. Browsers The first web browser was developed in the CERN in the end of 90’s years. It was very sophisticated and it had graphic interface but it only worked in NeXT. The browser Mosaic was the first important browser because NCSA1 prepared versions for Windows and Macintosh. But later Netscape Navigator was created which is much better than Mosaic because it is faster and it had more functionalities. Internet Explorer was created by Microsoft and it won Netscape Navigator and currently it is the most widely used browser. In the following image shows the evolution of the browsers: 12 3.1.2 JpGraph JPGraph I used JpGraph version r1096 because it is easy to install with PHP and it is also easy to use. JPGraph is free software. While I was searching information about JpGraph, I found some features that are very interesting in context of this project. In the following paragraphs I am going to describe the library and comment how to use it to draw the graphics in this project. JpGraph is an Object-Oriented Graph creating library for PHP 4.3.1 and next versions. The library is written in PHP and ready to be used in any PHP scripts (both CGI/APXS/ CLI versions of PHP are supported). It is possible to create numerous types of graphs with this library. JpGraph is easy to use, you can do simple and complex graphs with a few code. The JpGraph’s features are: •Flexible scales, supports text-lin, text-log, lin-lin, lin-log, log-lin and log-log and integer scales. •Supports both PNG, GIF and JPG graphic formats. •Supports caching of generated graphs to lessen burden of a HTTP server. •Supports batch mode to only generate images to a file. •Supports client side image maps which make it easy to produce drill down images. •Auto-scaling which gravitates towards esthetical values. •Fully supports manual scaling, with fine grain control of position of ticks. •Supports background images with different formatting options •Supports colour and brightness adjustments of images directly in PHP. •User specified grace for auto-scaling •Supports up to two different y-scale, it is possible to have different left and right y-scale and add plots to both •Supports, line-plots, filled line-plots, accumulated line-plots, bar plots, accumulated bar plots, grouped bar plots, error plots, line error plots, scatter plots, gantt-charts, radar plots, 2D and 3D pie charts. •Supports unlimited number of plots in each graph, makes it easy to compose complex graph which consists of several plot types •User specified position of axis •Supports colour gradient fill in seven styles •Designed as a flexible OO framework which makes it easy to add new types of plots •Supports automatic legend generation •Supports both vertical and horizontal grids •Supports anti-aliasing of lines •Supports background images as well as unlimited number of icons in the graph •Supports rotation of linear graphs •More then 400 named colours. •Designed modularly - you don't have to include code which isn't used 13 The scripts in JpGraph generates an image that must be in a separate file which is called in a HTML <IMG> tag. In this project we use the script “graphic.php” that generates in PHP an image and we call this in this way: <img src="graphic.php" border=0 align=center width =300 height=200> The most important commands to write a graph are: //to create a new Graph $graph = new Graph($width, $height, ...); //to generate a new Graph $graph->Stroke(); This information is from: http://www.aditus.nu/jpgraph/[20]. 3.1.3 FPDF I used FPDF version 16 in my project to generate PDF files. FPDF is a class written in PHP to generate PDF documents directly from PHP without using the library PDFLib. The mean of F in FPDF is Free, you can use it for any purpose and modify to your liking to fit your needs. •Choice of measure unit, page format and margins •Management of headers and footers •Automatic Page Break •Line breaks and justification of automatic text •Admission of images (JPEG, GIF and PNG) •Colours •Links •Admission of TrueType fonts, Type1 and encoding •Compression of page FPDF requires no extensions (except zlib to activate compression and GD for GIF support) and works with PHP4 and PHP5. I needed to create tables in the PDF to show the personal information of the user and the user’s stocks. To create a table you need to write: 14 function BasicTable($header,$data) { //Header foreach($header as $col) $this->Cell(40,7,$col,1); $this->Ln(); //Data foreach($data as $row) { foreach($row as $col) $this->Cell(40,6,$col,1); $this->Ln(); } } $pdf=new PDF(); $pdf->SetFont('Arial','',14); $pdf->AddPage(); $pdf->BasicTable($header,$data); $pdf->Output(); This information is from: http://www.fpdf.org [23]. 3.1.4 RSS I also used RSS (Really Simple Syndication). RSS is a family of formats for web sources encoded in XML. It is used to provide subscribers with updated information frequently. The format makes it possible to distribute content without a browser, using software designed to read RSS feeds (usually called aggregator). Despite this, it is possible to use the same browser to view RSS feeds. The latest versions of major browsers can read RSS feeds without additional software. RSS is part of the family of XML formats developed specifically for all types of sites that are updated regularly and through whom you can share information and use it on other sites or programs. This is known as re-organize or web site (a mistranslation, but widely used). http://wikipedia.org [24]. I found the information about how to create it showing other RSS files. A typical file to do RSS is: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?> <rss version="0.91"> <channel> <title>Title</title> <link>http://webpage.html</link> <description>Description</description> <language>en-uk</language> <image> <title>Title</title> <url>http://image.gif</url> <link>http://webpage.uk</link> <width>90</width> 15 <height>36</height> </image> <item> <title>Title Item</title> <link>http://webpage.uk</link> <description> Description By Author, Date </description> </item> <item> <title>Title Item 2</title> <link>http://webpage.uk</link> <description> Description 2 By Author, Date </description> </item> </channel> </rss> 16 3.2 Software Requirements Specifications 3.2.1 Introduction 3.2.1.1 Purpose The purpose of this document is to describe the features of the Virtual Trade. Users can register in the system and they can buy and sell stocks. The virtual system will permit practise and learn how work the trade without real money. 3.2.1.2 Project features The product is restricted to beginners in the trade. Users can see the variations of the prices of stocks in the trade by means of graphics. Also, users can see their own stocks and they can buy and sell stocks. Users will be able to see all information anywhere because the application is in a server connected in the Internet. Henceforth, users can consult the information and do changes when and where they want. The application is programmed using HTML, PHP, JavaScript and XML to do the RSS. Moreover, users can export a PDF file with their stocks and their personal information. Furthermore, users can receive RSS about the new purchases and sales. The system works in any Operative System and browser. 3.2.1.3 Definitions PDF: (Portable Document Format) is a file format created by Adobe Systems for document exchange. PDF is used for representing two-dimensional documents in a manner independent of the application software, hardware, and operating system. The documents in a PDF format have the smaller in size. PDF is an open standard. RSS: is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works in a standardized format. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favoured websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. RSS feeds can be read using software called an "RSS reader", "feed reader", or "aggregator", which can be web-based, desktop-based, mobile device or any computerized Internetconnected device. A standardized XML file format allows the information to be published once and viewed by many different programs. 17 PHP: is a scripting language originally designed for producing dynamic web pages. It has evolved to include a command line interface capability and can be used in standalone software and graphical applications. PHP was created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995. PHP is produced by The PHP Group. PHP is free software released under the PHP License. However it is incompatible with the GNU General Public License (GPL), due to restrictions on the usage of the term PHP. PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. It generally runs on a web server, taking PHP code as its input and creating web pages as output. It can be deployed on most web servers and on almost every operating system and platform. HTML (HyperText Markup Language): is the predominant mark-up language for web pages. It is used to describe the structure and the content in a text manner and to complete the text with objects like images. HTML is written in the form of tags that are surrounded by angle brackets (<,>). HTML can also describe the appearance of a document, and can include a script (such as JavaScript) that can affect the behaviour of Web browsers and other HTML processors. HTML also is used to refer to the MIME type content text/html or XML (like XHTML 1.0 or subsequent versions) or SGML (like HTML 4.01 and previous versions). HTML files use the extension .htm or .html. JavaScript: is an interpret language program, it does not require compilation. It is usually used in web pages. It has syntax similar to Java and C language. JavaScript is an object oriented language like Java. It includes inheritance using the Prototype-based programming, the new classes are generated cloning the base classes (prototypes) and extending their functionality. All of the modern browsers interpret JavaScript code integrated in the web pages. It works with a DOM implementation. JavaScript was invented by Brendan Eich in the company Netscape Communications. This company developed the first commercial web browsers. The first time that appeared JavaScript was in the Netscape product Netscape Navigator 2.0. Years before, it was using in a HTML web pages, to realize tasks and operations in the framework of a costumer application, without access to server functions. JavaScript is executed in the user agent and the sentences are downloading with the HTML code. 18 Initially, the authors called JavaScript as Mocha and later LiveScript but it was called finally JavaScript in an advertisement of Sun Microsystems and Netscape in 4th December of 1995. In 1997 the authors proposed JavaScript like a standard. It was an ECMA standard with the EcmaScript name and later it was also ISO standard. Jscript is the implementation of ECMAScript of Microsoft, very similar to JavaScript of Netscape, but with differences in the object model of the browser that this that the two versions incompatibles. To avoid the incompatibility, the World Wide Web Consortium designed the Document Object Model standard (DOM), that Konqueror, the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Opera version 7 and Mozilla include it. DOM (Document Object Model): is a cross-platform and language convention for representing and interacting with objects in HTML, XHTML and XML documents. The rules for programming and interacting with the DOM are specified in the DOM Application Programming Interface (API). The programs can access and modify the content, structure and style in the HTML and XML documents with DOM. W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is the responsible of DOM. W3C (World Wide Web Consortium): is an international consortium that produces standards to the World Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee manages W3C, he was also the creator of URL (Uniform Resource Locator), HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) and HTML (Hypertext Mark-up Language). These technologies are the principles in the web. 19 3.3.1 Entity-Relationship Model An Entity-Relationship Model (ERM) is an abstract and conceptual representation of data. Entity-relationship modelling is a database modelling method, used to produce a type of conceptual schema or semantic data model of a system, often a relational database, and its requirements in a top-down fashion. In this project I did the Entity-Relationship Model with the relationship of the tables in the Database. You can see 7 tables, “Ownership”, “Company”, “Stock”, “History”, “User”, “Buy” and “Sell”. “Stock” has a foreign key of “Company”, “Ownership” has a foreign key of “Stock” and another foreign key of “User”, “Sell” has a foreign key of “User” and a foreign key of “Stock”, “Buy” has a foreign key of “User” and a foreign key of “Stock”, “History” has two foreign key of “User” and a foreign key of “Stock”. 26 In the following paragraph I will explain the tables of the Data Base: •Company: this table contains the information of the companies, name address, web and the total of stocks that the company has. •Stock: this table contains the name of the ticker in each stock. •User: this table contains the information about the users, login, password, name, address, age and the cash that the user has. •Ownership: this table links “User” with “Stock”. It contains the stocks of each user. •Sell: this table links “User” with “Stock”. It contains the stocks that the user wants to sell. •Buy: this table links “User” with “Stock”. It contains the stocks that the user wants to buy. •History: this table links “User” with “Stock”. It contains all the transactions done in the trade market, it has the information about the buyer, seller, number of stocks sold, price, ticker and date. 3.3.2 Directories This project has several directories to organize the files. You need to execute the file called UniController.exe to run the server. In the /www and /functions directory you can find the PHP pages of the virtual trade. In /www directory: •index.php: is the main page. •buyuser.php: has the form to buy. •details.php: shows the information about an specific ticker. •error_login.php: shows wrong user when the user inserts the login or password wrong, •infouser.php: shows the information of the user, stocks, buy and sell orders, personal data and transaction history. •infouser2.php: executes the queries to update the personal information of the user. •loginindex.php: has the form to log in. •register.php: has the form to register. •register2.php: executes the queries to register the user in the system. Inside /www directory you can find the /functions directory with the following files: •buy.php: is executed when user presses the link “buy”. It does the queries to buy. •buyinyourchoice.php: is executed when user submits the form to buy in your choice. •sell.php: is called when user presses the link “sell”. •sell2.php: executes the queries to sell. •connexion.php: connects with the data base. 27 •divs.php: has the functions of printuser(), printsellbuyuser(), printlogin(), printsells(), printbuys(), printstocks(). •generatepdftables.php: is called when the user wants to generate a PDF with his information. •login.php: is called when the user submits the form to log in. •logout.php: is called when the user presses the link “logout”. •removebuy.php: is called when the user presses the link “remove” in the buy orders of the user. •removesells.php: is called when the user presses the link “remove” in the sell orders of the user. •rss.php: is called when user presses the RSS option. /virtualtrade /DB.txt /UniServer /disk_start.vbs /Server_Start.bat /Stop.bat /UniController.exe /udrive /usb_server_start.bat /usb_server_stop.bat /cgi-bin /docs /etc /home /htpasswd /plugins /ssl /tmp /usr /www /.htaccess /index.php.bak /favicon.ico /buyuser.php /details.php /error_login.php /index.php /infouser.php /infouser2.php /loginindex.php /register.php /register2.php /functions /buy.php /buyinyourchoice.php /conexion.php /divs.php /generatepdftables.php /login.php /logout.php /removebuy.php /removesells.php /rss.php /sell.php /sell2.php 28 /css /style.css /images /money.png /title.png /fpdf16 /FAQ.htm /histo.htm /install.txt /license.txt /fpdf.css /fpdf.php /doc /font /tutorial /graphs /graphic.php /QPL.txt /README /VERSION /docs /src 3.3.3 Interface The interface in this project is very simple and easy to use. You can see in the following image in the upper zone the logo with a hand with bills in the left, in the middle the title “Virtual Trade” and in the right two links, one for the register and the other one to sign in. The down zone has the form to login and a table with the information about the trade, you can see the company, ticker, the change per cent respect the price in the last close, the current price, the volume of stocks sold in the day, the price in the previous close and the date of the last sale. If you click in one ticker you can see the details, for example if you click SCO: 29 In this page you can change the visual options of the graphic, in stead of view the graphic today you can change it of this month or this year. Here, it shows the graphics of this month. 30 And here this year. If you click the link “Register” you can see the following page: You can register in the system, you need to introduce the login, password, name, address, age and click in the bottom “Register”. The system checks if all the fields are full, if it is not the case the system shows a message to the user. The system also checks if the login already exists, if this is the case, the system show a message to the user that the login exists and he has to introduce another one, if is not the case the system registers the new user and saves the data. If you click on “Sign” in you can see this: 31 The user has to introduce his login and his password and clicks in the bottom “Access”. The system checks if the login and password are corrects, if it is the case the user can see his information and he can see more options in the system, if it is not the case the system shows a message to the user that he has to put again his login and his password. If you log in the application you can see more options: In this page you can see in the left part your actual cash, your stocks with the ticker, number of stocks and price that was bought. You can see also your orders in the left part and the orders of the other users in other tables in the middle of the page. The user can remove his orders clicking in the link near the stocks that he wants to remove, the user can sell also his stocks pressing the link “Sell”, and buy stocks pressing “Buy” in a specific ticker or “Buy in your choice” if the user wants to buy another thing that it is not in the table “Sells”. User can also log out pressing the link “log out”. Moreover, user can generate a PDF file clicking in the link “Generate PDF with your information”, and for example for this user the PDF file will be this: 32 The PDF file is generated with the personal information of the user and his stocks with their details. The user, when wants to sell has to field the following things: The system asks user the price and the volume of stocks that wants to sell. Furthermore, the system informs user how many stocks he can sell, if the user introduce more stocks that he can sell the system sends a message to say that he can not sell this number of stocks and the user has to put other number. In other case the information is saved in the table “Sell”. The user when wants to buy in his choice sees this page: 33 The user has to choose the ticker that wants to buy and he has to introduce how many stocks he wants to buy and which price. Furthermore, if user clicks in the link with his login in the upper part of the page, he can see his information: The user can see his personal data and can modify this. Moreover, he can see his stocks, orders and transaction history (all the sales and purchases that he did in all the history of his login). 34 3.3.4 Example of a Demonstration I will show an example of transaction. If we have the system like the following image: Stanley signed in, he has an order that he wants to by 2 stocks of LLO for £2. Now, Stanley decides to sell 1 stock of SCO for £5. The system is now of this way: 35 The first web server was built by the British physicist Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, the Europen Centre for Nuclear Reserarch at Geneva, Switzerland. The immediate ancestor of Apache was built by the U.S. government’s NCSA, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Apache. The definitive Guide [4] MySQL My SQL is a free database management system like mSQL, Postgres. The most attractive features of MySQL’s features are: •Speed. •Ease of use. MySQL is less complex than other larger systems. •Cost. MyQSL is free. •Query language support. MySQL understands SQL, the most widely used language for the modern database systems. You can also access MySQL using applications that support ODBC, developed by Microsoft. •Capability. Many clients can connect to the server at the same time. You can access MySQL interactively using several interfaces that let you enter queries and view the results: command-line clients, Web browsers, or X Windows System clients. In addition, a variety of programming interfaces is available for languages such as C, Perl, Java, PHP, and Python. •Connectivity and security. MySQL is networked, and databases can be accessed from anywhere on the Internet, so you can share your data with anyone. But MySQL has access control for security. •Portability. MySQL runs on many varieties of UNIX, and other non-UNIX systems like Windows and OS/2. MySQL runs on hardwre from home PCs to high-end servers. •Open distribution. To obtain MySQL you only have to download it from the Internet and you can see and change the code. [6] MySQL. MySQL uses SQL language. The structured query language SQL (Structured Query Language) is a declarative language to access relational databases that allows you to specify various types of transactions at the same. One of its features is the handling of relational algebra and the calculation can launch queries to retrieve, in a simple-interest information from a database, and also make changes on it. It is a fourth generation language (4GL). SQL is a language access to databases that exploits the flexibility and power of relational systems enabling a variety of operations on them. Declarative language is a "high level" or "not applicable", which thanks to its strong theoretical foundation and guidance to the handling of sets of records, not individual records, allows high productivity in coding and object-orientation. In this way a single statement may amount to one or more programs you can use on a low-level languageoriented record. http://wikipedia.org [24]. 42 PHP PHP is a server-side scripting language designed specifically for the Web. Within an HTML page, you can embed PHP code that will be executed each time the page is visited. Your PHP code is interpreted at the web server and generates HTML or other output that the visitors will see. PHP was conceived in 1994 and was originally the work of Rasmus Lerdorf. PHP is an Open Source product, which means you have access to the source code and can use, alter, and redistribute it all without charge. PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page but was changed in line with the GNU (GNU = Gnu’s Not Unix) recursive naming convention and now stands for PHP Hypertext Preprocessor. Some of PHP’s features are listed below: •High performance: PHP is very efficient. You can serve millions of hits per day. •Database Integration: PHP has native connections available to many database systems. In addition to MySQL, you can directly connect to PostgreSQL, mSQL, Oracle, dbm, FilePro, Hyperwave, Informix, InterBase and Sybase databases. PHP 5 also has a built-in SQL interface to a flat file, called SQLite. Using the Open Database Connectivity Standard (ODBC), you can connect to any database that provides an ODBC driver. This includes Microsoft products and many others. •Built-in Libraries: Because PHP was designed for use on the Web, it has many built-in functions for performing many useful web-related tasks. You can generate GIF images on the fly, connect to web services and other network services, parse XML, send email, work with cookies, and generate PDF documents, all with just a few lines of code. •Cost: PHP is free. You can download the latest version from the website. •Ease of Learning PHP: The syntax of PHP is based on other programming languages, primarily C and Perl. •Object-Oriented Support: PHP 5 has well-design object-oriented features. If you learned to program in Java or C++, with PHP you can use inheritance, private and protected attributes and methods, abstract classes and methods, interfaces, constructors, destructors and built-in iteration behaviour. •Portability: PHP is available for many different operating systems. You can write PHP code on free Unix-like operating systems such as Linux and FreeBSD, commercial Unix versions such as Solaris and IRIX, or on different versions of Microsoft Windows. •Source code: You can modify or add something to the language. •Availability of Support: Zend Technologies, the company behind the engine that powers PHP, funds its PHP development by offering support and related software on a commercial basis. PHP and MySQL [7]. 43 3.4.2 Code explanation In this section, important functions like printlogin(), printuser(), printsells(), printbuys() and printstocks() are explained below : printlogin() printlogin() function is called in index.php, it prints the form to sign in the program. The form asks the user to enter the login and password details and calls a JavaScript function. The JavaScript function checks if the user has entered the login and password details. Finally, the form calls login.php that checks if the login and the password details are corrects The code is given below: <? function printlogin() { ?> <script type="text/javascript"> function check() { if(document.forms["formLogin"].login.value == "") { alert("Write your login"); document.forms["formLogin"].login.focus(); return false; } else if(document.forms["formLogin"].password.value == "") { alert("Write your password"); document.forms["formLogin"].password.focus(); return false; } else { return true; } } </script> <form name="formLogin" method="post" action="functions/login.php"> <table id="identification"> <tr> <td colspan="2" align="center"><h4>Identification</h4></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="right">Login: </td><td><input type="text" name="login" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="right">Password: </td><td><input type="password" name="password" /></td> </tr> <tr> 44 <td colspan="2" align="center"><input type="submit" value="Access" onClick="return check()"/> </tr> </table> </form> <? } printuser() printuser() function prints the login and the cash details of the logged user. printuser() function also prints the user’s stocks and if the user wants to sell some stock he has to just press the link “sell” near the stock. Moreover, shows the intended sales and purchases of the logged in user. The user can remove the selling and buying orders that he does not want, and can press any ticker to see the details of this ticker. The code is shown below: function printuser(){ ?> <h2> <?php echo $_SESSION['login']; ?> </h2> Cash: <?php $query = "SELECT * FROM User where login='".$_SESSION['login']."'"; $answer = mysql_query($query); $row = mysql_fetch_array($answer); echo $row["cash"]; $id = $row["id"]; echo "<br>"; //print the user's stocks $query = "SELECT Ownership.id AS ownerid, ticker, volume, stock, price FROM Ownership, Stock where user=".$id." and Ownership.stock = Stock.id"; $answer = mysql_query($query); echo "<table border='1'>"; echo "<tr><td colspan='4'><b>Stocks</b></td></tr>"; echo "<tr><td>Ticker</td><td>Volume</td><td>Price</td></tr>"; while($row = mysql_fetch_array($answer)){ echo "<tr>"; echo "<td>"; echo "<a href='details.php?idticker=".$row["stock"]."&ticker=". $row["ticker"]."'>".$row["ticker"]."</a>"; echo "</td>"; echo "<td>"; echo $row["volume"]; echo "</td>"; echo "<td>"; 45 echo $row["price"]; echo "</td>"; echo "<td>"; echo "<a href='/functions/sell.php?ownerid=". $row["ownerid"]."&ticker=".$row["ticker"]."&volume=". $row["volume"]."&stock=".$row["stock"]."'>Sell</a>"; echo "</td>"; echo "</tr>"; } echo "</table>"; //print the sell intentions of this user echo "<table border='1'>"; echo "<tr><td colspan='4'><b>Orders</b></td></tr>"; echo "<tr><td colspan='4'>Sells</td></tr>"; echo "<tr><td>Stock</td><td>Price</td><td>Volume</td></tr>"; $query = "SELECT Sell.id AS idsell, ticker, user, price, volume, stock, price FROM Sell, Stock where user=".$id." AND Stock.id = Sell.stock"; $answer = mysql_query($query); while($row = mysql_fetch_array($answer)){ echo "<tr>"; echo "<td>"; echo "<a href='details.php?idticker=".$row["stock"]."&ticker=". $row["ticker"]."'>".$row["ticker"]."</a>"; echo "</td>"; echo "<td>"; echo $row["price"]; echo "</td>"; echo "<td>"; echo $row["volume"]; echo "</td>"; echo "<td>"; echo "<a href='/functions/removesells.php?idsell=". $row['idsell']."'>Remove</a>"; echo "</td>"; echo "</tr>"; } //print the buy intentions of this user echo "<tr><td colspan='4'>Buys</td></tr>"; echo "<tr><td>Stock</td><td>Price</td><td>Volume</td></tr>"; $query = "SELECT Buy.id AS idbuy, ticker, user, price, volume, stock FROM Buy, Stock where user=".$id." AND Stock.id = Buy.stock"; $answer = mysql_query($query); while($row = mysql_fetch_array($answer)){ echo "<tr>"; echo "<td>"; echo "<a href='details.php?idticker=".$row["stock"]."&ticker=". $row["ticker"]."'>".$row["ticker"]."</a>"; echo "</td>"; echo "<td>"; echo $row["price"]; echo "</td>"; echo "<td>"; echo $row["volume"]; echo "</td>"; echo "<td>"; echo "<a href='/functions/removebuy.php?idbuy=". $row['idbuy']."'>Remove</a>"; echo "</td>"; echo "</tr>"; 46 } echo "</table>"; } printsells() and printbuys() printsells() and printbuys() functions are very similar. printsells() shows the “Sell” table in order without the current user’s stocks and the logged in users can buy any row by clicking on the link near the rows. printbuys() shows the “buy” table in descendant order without the current user’s stocks too. User can see any stock’s details only by clicking on the stock. The code is given below: function printsells(){ ?> <h2>Sells</h2> <? $currentuser = $_SESSION['login']; $query = "SELECT *, Sell.id AS idbuy, User.login AS loginuser FROM Sell, User, Stock WHERE Sell.user = User.id and Stock.id = Sell.stock ORDER BY Sell.price"; $answer = mysql_query($query); echo "<table border='1'>"; echo "<tr><td>Stock</td><td>Price</td><td>Volume</td><td>User</td></tr>"; while($row = mysql_fetch_array($answer)){ //don't print the current user's sell intentions if($row["loginuser"]!==$currentuser){ echo "<tr>"; echo "<td>"; //User can see the ticker's details echo "<a href='details.php?idticker=". $row["stock"]."&ticker=".$row["ticker"]."'>".$row["ticker"]."</a>"; echo "</td>"; echo "<td>"; echo $row["price"]; echo "</td>"; echo "<td>"; echo $row["volume"]; echo "</td>"; echo "<td>"; echo $row["login"]; echo "</td>"; echo "<td>"; //User can buy this echo "<a href='/functions/buy.php?idbuy=". $row["idbuy"]."&buyer=".$currentuser."'>Buy</a>"; echo "</td>"; echo "</tr>"; } } echo "</table>"; } function printbuys(){ ?> <h2>Buys</h2> 47 <? $query ="SELECT * FROM User WHERE cash <= 0"; $answer = mysql_query($query); while($row = mysql_fetch_array($answer)){ $query = "DELETE FROM Buy WHERE user=".$row['id']; mysql_query($query); } //Buys table in descendant order $query = "SELECT * , User.login AS loginuser FROM Buy, User, Stock WHERE Buy.user = User.id and Stock.id = Buy.stock ORDER BY Buy.price DESC"; $answer = mysql_query($query); echo "<table border='1'>"; echo "<tr><td>Stock</td><td>Price</td><td>Volume</td><td>User</td></tr>"; while($row = mysql_fetch_array($answer)){ //don't print the current user's sell intentions if($row["loginuser"]!==$_SESSION['login']){ echo "<tr>"; echo "<td>"; //User can see the ticker's details echo "<a href='details.php?idticker=". $row["stock"]."&ticker=".$row["ticker"]."'>".$row["ticker"]."</a>"; echo "</td>"; echo "<td>"; echo $row["price"]; echo "</td>"; echo "<td>"; echo $row["volume"]; echo "</td>"; echo "<td>"; echo $row["login"]; echo "</td>"; echo "</tr>"; } } echo "</table>"; } printstocks() printstocks() function prints information about the stocks. It makes a query with the “History” table in descendant order and also makes a query with the current date. printstocks() function shows the current price of each ticker with the volume of stocks that were sold, the changes in pounds and the percent respect to the last price in last day that someone bought, the last price and the date of the last transaction. It used an array called “Companies” that stores the tickers we use in order to not repeat the same ticker in the table shown. The code is given below: function pricestocks(){ //companies array to don't repeat any company $companies[] = array(); //query of get the history prices 48 $query = "SELECT History.id AS idhistory, History.stock, History.price, History.time, History.volume, Stock.ticker, Company.name FROM History, Stock, Company WHERE History.stock=Stock.id AND Stock.company=Company.id ORDER BY History.time DESC"; $answer = mysql_query($query); //query to obtain the current date $querytoday = "SELECT DISTINCT year(now()) AS year, month(now()) AS month, day(now()) AS day FROM History"; $answertoday = mysql_query($querytoday); $rowtoday = mysql_fetch_array($answertoday); $year = $rowtoday["year"]; $month = $rowtoday["month"]; $day = $rowtoday["day"]; $datetoday = $year."-".$month."-".$day." 00:00:00"; echo "<table border='1'>"; echo "<tr><td>Company</td><td>Ticker</td><td>Change %</td><td>Price</td><td>Volume</td><td>Change</td><td>Prev Close</td><td>Date</td></tr>"; while($row = mysql_fetch_array($answer)){ //select the last price of the last day before $querypricebefore = "SELECT History.price AS pricebefore FROM History, Stock WHERE History.stock=Stock.id AND time < '". $datetoday."' AND History.stock = ".$row["stock"]." ORDER BY History.time DESC"; $answerpricebefore = mysql_query($querypricebefore); while($rowpricebefore = mysql_fetch_array($answerpricebefore)){ //if the company is not in $companies if (!in_array($row["name"], $companies)){ echo "<tr>"; echo "<td>"; echo $row["name"]; echo "</td>"; echo "<td>"; //user can see the ticker's details and send the data by GET method echo "<a href='details.php?idticker=". $row["stock"]."&ticker=".$row["ticker"]."&name=". $row["name"]."&price=".$row["price"]."&pricebefore=". $rowpricebefore["pricebefore"]."&volume=".$row["volume"]."&time=". $row["time"]."'>".$row["ticker"]."</a>"; echo "</td>"; echo "<td>"; //change%, compare the current price with last price in last day $number = 100*($row["price"]- $rowpricebefore["pricebefore"])/$rowpricebefore["pricebefore"]; //only 2 decimals echo round($number,2)."%"; echo "</td>"; echo "<td>"; echo $row["price"]; echo "</td>"; echo "<td>"; echo $row["volume"]; echo "</td>"; echo "<td>"; //subtraction of the current price and the last price in last day echo $row["price"]- $rowpricebefore["pricebefore"]."£"; 49 echo "</td>"; echo "<td>"; echo $rowpricebefore["pricebefore"]."£"; echo "</td>"; echo "<td>"; echo $row["time"]; echo "</td>"; echo "</tr>"; //introduce the company in $companies array_push($companies, $row["name"]); } } } echo "</table>"; } ?> sell.php sell.php is called when the user clicks ‘sell’ in one of his tickers. The User has to tell the price at which he wishes to sell the stocks and also tells how many stocks he wants to sell. The system calculates the amount of stocks the user can sell and checks in the JavaScript function if the price and the volume are correct and calls the sell2.php. The code is given below: <? session_start(); include("conexion.php"); $query = "SELECT * FROM User WHERE login ='".$_SESSION['login']."'"; $result = mysql_query($query, $conexion); $row = mysql_fetch_array($result); $ownerid = $_GET["ownerid"]; $ticker = $_GET["ticker"]; $volume = $_GET["volume"]; $stock = $_GET["stock"]; ?> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <html> <head> <title>Sell</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> </head> <body> You are going to sell: <br/><br/> <? echo "Ticker: "; echo $ticker; echo "<br/>"; //query to know the number of stocks that user has of this ticket $query = "SELECT SUM(Volume) AS Volowner FROM Ownership WHERE stock = ".$stock." AND user=".$row["id"]; 50 $resultowner = mysql_query($query, $conexion); $rowowner = mysql_fetch_array($resultowner); //query to know the stock's number that user wants to sell previously $query = "SELECT SUM(Volume) AS Volsell FROM Sell WHERE stock = ". $stock." AND user=".$row["id"]; $resultsell = mysql_query($query, $conexion); $rowsell = mysql_fetch_array($resultsell); //number of stocks that user can sell $total = $rowowner["Volowner"] - $rowsell["Volsell"]; ?> <script type="text/javascript"> function check() { if(document.forms["formSell"].price.value == "") { alert("Write the price"); document.forms["formSell"].price.focus(); return false; } else if(document.forms["formSell"].volume.value == "") { alert("You have to write the number of stocks that you want to sell"); document.forms["formSell"].volume.focus(); return false; } else if(document.forms["formSell"].price.value < 0) { alert("The price can't be negative"); document.forms["formSell"].price.focus(); return false; } else if(parseInt(document.forms["formSell"].volume.value) > <? echo $total; ?>) { alert("You can't sell all of this stocks"); document.forms["formSell"].volume.focus(); return false; } else { return true; } } </script> <form name="formSell" method="post" action="sell2.php?ownerid=<? echo $ownerid; ?>&ticker=<? echo $ticker; ?>&stock=<? echo $stock; ?>"> <table id="wantsell"> <tr> <td align="left">Price of each stock: </td><td><input type="text" name="price" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="left">Volume of stocks:</td><td><input type="text" name="volume" /></td><td align="right">(you can sell no more than <? echo $total; ?>) </td> </tr> 51 $result = mysql_query($query, $conexion); } //The user who buys will have more stocks $query = "select * from Ownership where user=".$row["id"]." and stock=".$ticker." and price=".$price; $result = mysql_query($query, $conexion); $insertedvolume = $volume; if($volume > $row2["volume"]) { $insertedvolume = $row2["volume"]; } if (mysql_affected_rows($conexion) == 0) { $query = "insert into Ownership(user, stock, volume, price) values (".$row["id"].",".$ticker.",".$insertedvolume.",". $price.")"; mysql_query($query, $conexion); } else { $query = "update Ownership set volume=volume +". $insertedvolume." where user=".$row["id"]." and stock=".$ticker." and price=".$price; mysql_query($query, $conexion); } //The user that wants to buy will have less cash $query = "SELECT * FROM User WHERE id = ".$row["id"]; $result = mysql_query($query, $conexion); $rowinfobuyer = mysql_fetch_array($result); $amount = $price * $insertedvolume; $total = $rowinfobuyer["cash"] - $amount; $query = "update User set cash=".$total." where id='". $row['id']."'"; mysql_query($query, $conexion); $insertedbuyvolume = $volume - $insertedvolume; $query = "SELECT * FROM Buy WHERE price=".$price." AND stock=". $ticker." AND user=".$row["id"]; $result = mysql_query($query, $conexion); if (mysql_affected_rows($conexion) > 0) { $query = "update Buy set volume=volume +".$insertedbuyvolume." where price=".$price." AND stock=".$ticker." AND user=".$row["id"]; $result = mysql_query($query, $conexion); } else{ if($insertedbuyvolume > 0) { $query = "insert into Buy(price, volume, stock, user) values (".$price.",".$insertedbuyvolume.",".$ticker.",". $row["id"].")"; $result = mysql_query($query, $conexion); } } //The user who sells will have less stocks $query = "update Ownership set volume=volume -". $row2["volume"]." where user='".$row2["seller"]."' and stock=". $ticker; 58 mysql_query($query, $conexion); //Delete the row with volume=0 in the table ownership $query = "delete from Ownership where volume <= 0"; $result = mysql_query($query, $conexion); //The user who sells will have more cash $usertosell = $row2["seller"]; $query = "update User set cash=cash +".$amount." where id = ". $seller; mysql_query($query, $conexion); //Insert the info in History $query = "insert into History(time, price, buyer, seller, stock, volume) values (now(),".$price.",".$row["id"].",".$seller.",". $ticker.",".$insertedvolume.")"; mysql_query($query, $conexion); } else{ $query = "SELECT * FROM Buy WHERE price=".$price." AND stock=". $ticker." AND user=".$row["id"]; $result = mysql_query($query, $conexion); if (mysql_affected_rows($conexion) > 0) { $query = "update Buy set volume=volume +".$volume." where price=".$price." AND stock=".$ticker." AND user=".$row["id"]; $result = mysql_query($query, $conexion); } else{ $query = "insert into Buy(price, volume, stock, user) values (".$price.",".$volume.",".$ticker.",".$row["id"].")"; $result = mysql_query($query, $conexion); } } } header("Location: ../index.php"); ?> rss.php PHP works with RSS besides HTML. rss.php shows selling and buying of orders. The user who has the RSS is informed of the new rows of ‘Buy’ and ‘Sell’ tables, the system shows the ticker, price, volume and date details. The code is given below: 59 <?php print "<?"; ?>xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" <?php print "? >"; include("conexion.php"); $query = "SELECT * FROM Sell, Stock WHERE Sell.stock = Stock.id"; $answersell = mysql_query($query); $query = "SELECT * FROM Buy, Stock WHERE Buy.stock = Stock.id"; $answerbuy = mysql_query($query); $query = "SELECT now() AS time FROM Sell"; $answernow = mysql_query($query); $rownow = mysql_fetch_array($answernow); ?> <rss version="2.0"> <channel> <title>Virtual Trade</title> <link>http://localhost/</link> <description>Virtual Trade is a simulation of the real Trade.</description> <language>en-uk</language> <? while($row = mysql_fetch_array($answersell)){ ?> <item> <title>Sells</title> <link>http://localhost/</link> <description> <? echo "Ticker: ".$row['ticker']; echo "<br/>"; echo "Price: ".$row['price']; echo "<br/>"; echo "Volume: ".$row['volume']; echo "<br/>"; ?> </description> <pubDate> <? echo $rownow["time"]; ?> </pubDate> <guid>http://localhost/</guid> </item> <? } while($row = mysql_fetch_array($answerbuy)){ ?> <item> <title>Buys</title> <link>http://localhost/</link> <description> <? echo "Ticker: ".$row['ticker']; echo "<br/>"; echo "Price: ".$row['price']; echo "<br/>"; echo "Volume: ".$row['volume']; echo "<br/>"; ?> </description> <pubDate> <? echo $rownow["time"]; 60 ?> </pubDate> <guid>http://localhost/</guid> </item> <? } ?> </channel> </rss> graphic.php graphic.php is called in details.php. In details.php there is the next JavaScript code, a link and a form to know if the user chooses to see the graphic as per days, per months or per years: <script type="text/javascript"> function check() { number = document.getElementById("link").src.length-1; var a = document.getElementById("link").src.substring(0, number) + document.getElementById("time").value; document.getElementById("link").src = a; } </script> <? echo "<img src='/graphs/graphic.php?idticker=".$idticker."&graph=0' id='link'>"; ?> <br/><br/> <SELECT id="time" onChange="check()"> <OPTION value="0" selected>Today</option> <OPTION value="1">This month</option> <OPTION value="2">This year</option> </SELECT> The JavaScript code changes the last character in the link to draw the graphic with the user’s selection in the form. graphic.php generates a graphic based on per days, per months or per years depending of the user’s selection. The day’s graphic is drawn with the data of the present day. The month’s graphic is drawn with the price’s average each day in the current month. The year’s graphic is drawn with the price’s average each month in the current year. <?php session_start(); 61 include("../functions/conexion.php"); include ("src/jpgraph.php"); include ("src/jpgraph_line.php"); $idticker = $_GET["idticker"]; $graph = $_GET["graph"]; $ydata = array(); $datax = array(); //if the user selects per days if($graph == 0){ $query = "SELECT DISTINCT year(time) AS year, month(time) AS month, day(time) AS day, hour(time) AS hour, minute(time) AS minute, year(now()) AS yearnow, month(now()) AS monthnow, day(now()) AS daynow, time, price FROM History WHERE stock=".$idticker; $answer = mysql_query($query); while($row = mysql_fetch_array($answer)){ if ($row["day"] == $row["daynow"]){ array_push($ydata, floatval($row["price"])); $st = $row["hour"].":".$row["minute"]; array_push($datax, $st); } } } //if the user selects per months if($graph == 1){ $query= "SELECT AVG(price), month(time) AS month, day(time) AS d, month(now()) AS monthnow, time FROM History WHERE stock=". $idticker." GROUP BY d"; $answer = mysql_query($query); while($row = mysql_fetch_array($answer)){ if ($row["month"] == $row["monthnow"]){ array_push($ydata, floatval($row["AVG(price)"])); array_push($datax, $row["d"]); } } } //if the user selects per years if($graph == 2){ $query= "SELECT AVG(price), month(time) AS m, year(time) AS year, month(now()) AS monthnow, year(now()) AS yearnow, time FROM History WHERE stock=".$idticker." GROUP BY m"; $answer = mysql_query($query); while($row = mysql_fetch_array($answer)){ if ($row["year"] == $row["yearnow"]){ array_push($ydata, floatval($row["AVG(price)"])); if($row["m"] == 1){ array_push($datax, "January"); } if($row["m"] == 2){ array_push($datax, "February"); } if($row["m"] == 3){ array_push($datax, "March"); } if($row["m"] == 4){ array_push($datax, "April"); } if($row["m"] == 5){ array_push($datax, "May"); } 62 if($row["m"] == 6){ array_push($datax, "Juny"); } if($row["m"] == 7){ array_push($datax, "July"); } if($row["m"] == 8){ array_push($datax, "August"); } if($row["m"] == 9){ array_push($datax, "September"); } if($row["m"] == 10){ array_push($datax, "October"); } if($row["m"] == 11){ array_push($datax, "November"); } if($row["m"] == 12){ array_push($datax, "December"); } } } } // Create the graph. These two calls are always required $graph = new Graph(300,200,"auto"); $graph->SetScale("textlin"); // Specify the tick labels $graph->xaxis->SetTickLabels($datax); // Create the linear plot $lineplot=new LinePlot($ydata); $lineplot->mark->SetType(MARK_UTRIANGLE); // Add the plot to the graph $graph->Add($lineplot); $graph->img->SetMargin(40,20,20,40); $graph->title->Set("Graphic"); $graph->xaxis->title->Set("Date"); $graph->yaxis->title->Set("Price"); $graph->title->SetFont(FF_FONT1,FS_BOLD); $graph->yaxis->title->SetFont(FF_FONT1,FS_BOLD); $graph->xaxis->title->SetFont(FF_FONT1,FS_BOLD); $lineplot->SetColor("blue"); $lineplot->SetWeight(2); $graph->yaxis->SetColor("red"); $graph->yaxis->SetWeight(2); $graph->SetShadow(); // Display the graph $graph->Stroke(); 63 3.5 Software Testing and Test Sets I tested the Software with artificial data. I introduced users, companies and stocks in the database. I did a test with the users Stanley and merc with £1000 of cash, the companies Barclays, Scotland, Lloyds and Abbey and the stocks BAR, SCO, LLO and ABB. I put stocks to merc and Stanley in the “Ownership” table, merc has 1 stock of SCO that was sold for £1, 5 stocks of SCO that were sold for £5, 5 stocks of ABB that were sold for £5 and 1 stock of SCO that was sold for £1 and Stanley has 3 stocks of LLO that were sold for £4 each, 2 stocks of SCO that were sold for £5 each, 5 stocks of SCO that were sold for £3 each and 2 stocks of BAR that were sold for £2 each. merc Cash:1000 Ticker Volume Price LLO 1 1 SCO 5 5 ABB 5 5 SCO 1 1 Stanley Cash:1000 Ticker Volume Price LLO 3 4 SCO 2 5 SCO 5 3 BAR 2 2 Stanley wants to sell the two stocks of BAR for £3. And after merc wants to buy one stock of BAR for £3. Therefore, a transaction is made and the data now is: merc Cash:1000 Ticker Volume Price LLO 1 1 SCO 5 5 ABB 5 5 SCO 1 1 BAR 1 3 Stanley Cash:1000 Ticker Volume Price LLO 3 4 SCO 2 5 SCO 5 3 BAR 1 2 64 4 Critical Appraisal This project was interesting for me. The trading is not a very familiar area for computer science engineers. I learnt a lot of things searching information about trading and I found that the subject is interesting. I tried to make the application as realistic as possible and more similar to the trade market but I encountered many difficulties, like the companies not being able to enter an initial price and in the real market there is a lot of statistical data that I do not have. The project went well as I followed the plan but I made a lot of mistakes at the beginning in PHP programming and SQL queries. I changed the Database and PDF library many times. I would have spent less time in doing my project if I have known this in advance. I solved the errors introducing the queries in the console of PHPMyAdmin to know if the query is good. I was proving one thing after anotherin order to figure out what was wrong. I was looking for my errors in various forums in the internet. If I would have had more time to do the project, I would have looked for more functions in PHP in depth or would have been looking more options in CSS, I could have presented more options to generate PDF files and more graphics. If at some point I or someone else continues my project, it can be improved in lot many ways if it is added to a forum, more graphics and more options can be added, like displaying the progress of a user or the companies being able to determine the real prices. I did not have enough time to research deeply about trading and I could not conduct a rigorous test because I had only three months to do the project. A major part of the first two months was taken up by research and approach; programming was largely conducted in the last month. I think the project was well planned. The first week I spent mostly planning and searching for information. The following weeks were spent searching for more information and I also did the Software Requirement Specification, the design and the data base. I was programming PHP after that, I solved a lot of mistakes and at the end I added the option to generate PDF files, graphics and RSS. The last two weeks I wrote the report and I did tests, I found errors and things that I had missed before like when for example you want to buy 2 stocks of the ticker BAR for £2 and there is another user that wants sell 3 stocks of the ticker BAR for £2, the system has to do an automatic sale. To summarize, I would say that this project was very interesting, I learnt how trading works and I practised programming in PHP and I learnt to solve programming problems in PHP. All in all, working on this project was a very good experience for me. 65 5 Bibliography and Citations 5.1 Literary Sources [1] W. R. Page, Arithmetic out at work: a practical course with examples taken form the retail trade, J. M. Dent & Sons LTD, 1962. [2] J.M.W. Tadion, Deciphering the market: Principles of Chart Reading and Trading Stocks, Commodities and Currencies, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester, 1996. [3] Thomas Connolly and Carolyn Begg, Database Solutions, Addison Wesley, London, 2000. [4] Hakon Wium Lie and Bert Bos: Cascading Style Sheets, Addison Wesley, Indiana, 2006. [5] David Sawyer McFarland: Dreamweaver MX, David Pogue, Sebastol, California, 2002. [6] Ben Laurie and Peter Laurie: Apache. The Definitive Guide, O’Reilly, Sebastol, California, 2003. [7] Luke Welling and Laura Thomson: PHP and MySQL Web Development, Developer’s library, United States of America, 2004. [8] Paul DuBois: MySQL, New riders, United States of America, 1999. [9] Gary B. Shelly, Thomas J. Cashman, Steven G.Forsythe and Steven M. Freund: Mozilla Firefox. Introductory Concepts and Techniques, Shelly Cashman Series, Boston, 2006. [10] César Pérez: Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004, Ra-Ma; Reference, Madrid, 2004. [11] Diego Montenegro: Firefox-Thunderbird, InforBook’s S.L., Barcelona, 2006. 66 5.2 Web Sources [12] http://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/financial-planning/stock.htm. Homepage of howstuffworks, February 2009. [13] http://uk.finance.yahoo.com./. Homepage yahoo finance, February 2009. [14] http://www.invertironline.com/Aprender/Nivel4/N4introbolsa1.asp (Definition and the functions of Trade). Homepage invertironline, February 2009. [15] http://www.uniformserver.com/. Homepage uniformserver, February 2009. [16] http://php.net/. Homepage PHP, February 2009. [17] http://www.mysql.com. Homepage mySQL, February 2009. [18] http://www.w3schools.com/sql/default.asp. Homepage w3schools, February 2009. [19] http://www.apache.org/. Homepage apache, February 2009. [20] http://www.aditus.nu/jpgraph /. Homepage jpgraph, April 2009. [21] http://www.devshed.com/c/a/PHP/PDF-Generation-With-PHP/. Homepage PDF generation, April 2009. [22] http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=56. Homepage downes, April 2009. [23] http://www.fpdf.com. Homepage FPDF, April 2009. [24] http://wikipedia.org. Homepage Wikipedia, April 2009. 67