Poll - Vote Only Once

I agree with ljamal, the use of a separate table with fixed-size records would probably be faster than the use of a variable-size memo field.  This method would be slightly more involved, since you'd need to create an additional table.  If you're comfortable with Access databases, following is another method that can assuredly prevent multiple votes.  This has been tested on v7.01, Access 2000 but should work with Access 2002 as well

1.  Open your forum database in Access, then add an empty table called 'tblVotes' with the following fields & attributes:

Field               Attributes

Vote_ID:     AutoNumber, Indexed with no duplicates.  Set this as the primary key.

Poll_ID:       Number (long integer)

Author_ID:   Number (long integer)

Save & upload your database to your server

2.  Download http://www.allersoft.com/wwf/poll_mod_701_v2.zip.  Replace poll_cast_vote.asp in the forum directory and poll_display_inc.asp in the includes directory with the provided files.

That's it.  This method on average will require slightly more space than the method I described in the previous post, but should be faster.  If borg decides to implement a more rigorous vote-once option, this (or something similar) is probably what he'll use.  Thanks borg for a great forum

P.S.  There's no provision for deleting the vote records, that would involve mod to the admin panel which I'll leave to borg or a more motivated mod-builder, but you can manually delete the vote records periodically.

Edited by exile2003

Searches and updates would be slower in that case.  But if you're really pressed for space, you could combine the Author_ID and Poll_ID into one "long integer".  In this case Author_ID and Poll_ID cannot exceed 65000 (size of a "short", 2-byte integer), and you can have only up to 65000 vote records.  But you then will only have to store one long integer (4 bytes), instead of three for each vote.

I agree with ljamal, i don't think you need to store the vote_id, also you don't need to edit the admin panel neither just insert some code on poll_display_inc.asp that runs only if the poll has expired, that code will check if the votes are still in the db and delete them...

Well I finally finished it!

I made the mod so you can set an expiration date on the polls and on the admin section you can set it to automatically delete the votes once the poll expires or to display a link to admins on the poll once it has expired to delete the votes, it also deletes the votes if the poll ever gets deleted before it expires.....

read about it and download it here: http://forums.webwiz.net/forum_posts.asp?TID=2808&PN=1&TPN=1