WarcraftRealms.com

Ok, working on a big project for my server. However, i'm ending up in a bit over my head.

I'm building a site to be a guild directory. Heres the site model. Guilds who want to be listed submit their guild data to appear in the guild's directory. Including some things like individual guild news (possibly via RSS feeds from individual guild sites) and stuff like that. The guild directory is my big project though.

Heres my END goal.

-Guild submits their information, including a link or their guild number here on warcraft realms.
-Once per week the site pulls all the guild data for each guild in the directory and stores it on the site. (probably parsing the data into a single SQL database on my site)
-Visitors to the site are then able to click on a guild and see things like number of members, class distribution, level distribution, and maybe view each of these as growth over time.

Alright, so I found the script stickied here for grabbing the CSV file from warcraft realms, though I'm not sure how to automate the running of this script weekly.

Upon grabbing a new CSV for a guild, I would then need to parse the file for the data I'm trying to output. So, parsing for things like # of hunters, total members, etc. Once parsed that data should be added to a table in my SQL database with that week's timestamp on it so that I can accumulate data for each guild ranging over time to be able to provide guild history. This scripting is a bit beyond me though.

Assuming I got that part done, I would then need to output this data in a way that users could use it since the raw format is useless. I believe begining with a simple text version is what I would start with, maybe eventually moving to a graph of some form.

I guess my question is, have you seen this done anywhere so I could see an example to try to work off of or even better, hope for some help from the creator in guiding me. Also, do you have any pertinent links that pop into your heads reguarding good places to start for some of this. I've been trying to map out the process in my head all day but I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed.

Thnx to anyone who read this whole thing, and more to anyone with some help for this.

I reccommend working on the parser first... I'm not familiar with the format, but frankly that's the most important part. Much of the other things, such as adding to the database, etc. will probably be handled through SQL objects and such.

The parser should most likely store it into data, have the front end take the data from the SQL database and add the appropriate formatting. In terms of a simple text version, it should most likely be mainly adding some HTML formatting and reordering where stuff goes..

In terms of specific code you'd be using, I'd have to actually examine the file I'm guessing you could use a text based semi-tagged parser... but that's just off the top of my head (and awfully brute force)

There isn't that much data to parse to be honest. I'm most likely only going to consider lvl 60+ characters first off which cuts out a lot of the fat guilds build up with lobie alts, twinks and banks.

Second, the only information that I see as important is

1. Guild roster week to week
2. Number of each class week to week
3. Total guild members(lvl 60+) week to week.

Seems like it would be simple to do, just not a coding person. I'm decent ad modifying code that already does similar to what I want but writing fresh code is not my thing.