Need advice on creating an app/website for an upcoming event. Any language.

[MorbidAngel]

 

Hello. I tried to explain in the title but it got very messy. I'll try to keep it short. There's an upcoming event that my family member is hosting and they asked me if I could create something for them that they could use. It does not have to look good in any way, it just has to work.

 

Basically it will work like this:

 

X amount of people will go around to different stations. At each station they will get a card. They will travel around to 5 different stations and get a different card at each one.

 

However, it has to be secure. At first I made a website that just showed you a random card when you scanned a QR code. But this would allow people to just refresh the page or scan the QR code multiple times. There's a big price involved so I have to make sure people can't cheat. I also tried making it so people can't refresh the page but that means they could still just scan the QR code again.

 

My plan was to have 5 different QR codes and webpages that generated a random card from a specific collection but this isn't very safe at all.

 

I'm not super knowledgeable in programming but I know the basic stuff. But I figured I'd ask here and maybe someone has a better suggestion!

 

There will be someone to monitor people, so it's not like it has to be 100% un-crackable. Just not as easy as I said above, refreshing the page etc.

 

Is this possible? And what would be the best approach for this? A mobile app, a website? 

 

Thank you for your help!

[Heliian]

You mean a poker run. 

 

Digital poker run I guess?

 

There must be something out there app wise already. 

 

 

 

 

[Sauron]

If they physically get a card isn't it simpler to just hand them a card from a shuffled deck at each stand and check their combination at the end?

 

Otherwise you could require them to get an account so you can know who has already scanned which qr codes and what cards they already got. This prevents refreshing to get a different card. One could make multiple accounts but you could make it a condition that to be eligible for the prize your account MUST have your full, real name.

[Nayr438]

The simple solution would be user accounts. If you can host a small MariaDB or PostgreSQL Server somewhere. One a code is scanned or entered, just add it to the table so it cant be re-used by the same person. If its a Mobile App, you could use a unique identifier for the device to limit the number of accounts that can be used per device.

 

[MorbidAngel]

21 minutes ago, Sauron said:

If they physically get a card isn't it simpler to just hand them a card from a shuffled deck at each stand and check their combination at the end?

 

Otherwise you could require them to get an account so you can know who has already scanned which qr codes and what cards they already got. This prevents refreshing to get a different card. One could make multiple accounts but you could make it a condition that to be eligible for the prize your account MUST have your full, real name.

Yeah they used to hand out the cards but due to Covid they want to avoid as much human interaction as possible. 

 

I've never made a website/app that required any sort of login before, how hard is this? As I said it just has to be reeeeeally simple. It would be possible to even create accounts beforehand and then give each person a paper with their own login and password so they don't have to create an account themselves. If that makes it easier. 

10 minutes ago, Nayr438 said:

The simple solution would be user accounts. If you can host a small MariaDB or PostgreSQL Server somewhere. One a code is scanned or entered, just add it to the table so it cant be re-used by the same person. If its a Mobile App, you could use a unique identifier for the device to limit the number of accounts that can be used per device.

 

Thank you for you help, I'm gonna ask you the same thing I asked the commenter above you in the second paragraph. Thanks again! 

[MorbidAngel]

40 minutes ago, Heliian said:

You mean a poker run. 

 

Digital poker run I guess?

 

There must be something out there app wise already. 

 

 

 

 

Yes exactly! I've searched but I can't find anything unfortunately.. 

[Nayr438]

4 minutes ago, MorbidAngel said:

Yeah they used to hand out the cards but due to Covid they want to avoid as much human interaction as possible. 

 

I've never made a website/app that required any sort of login before, how hard is this? As I said it just has to be reeeeeally simple. It would be possible to even create accounts beforehand and then give each person a paper with their own login and password so they don't have to create an account themselves. If that makes it easier. 

Thank you for you help, I'm gonna ask you the same thing I asked the commenter above you in the second paragraph. Thanks again! 

It's actually fairly simple, especially if its for a one off thing that doesn't need to rely on much security. Here is a website that shows a simple registration+login wtih mysql/mariadb and php https://www.tutorialrepublic.com/php-tutorial/php-mysql-login-system.php

[Sauron]

22 minutes ago, MorbidAngel said:

I've never made a website/app that required any sort of login before, how hard is this?

Not that hard, you need a backend though.

[MorbidAngel]

6 hours ago, Nayr438 said:

It's actually fairly simple, especially if its for a one off thing that doesn't need to rely on much security. Here is a website that shows a simple registration+login wtih mysql/mariadb and php https://www.tutorialrepublic.com/php-tutorial/php-mysql-login-system.php

 

5 hours ago, Sauron said:

Not that hard, you need a backend though.

 

 

Gonna answer you both here. I can get a host where I can store the files needed and upload the website. I also took a look at the link Nayr sent and it seems pretty straightforward.

 

However once I've done that. Let's say people get access to the site, create a login with their password etc. What would you recommend that I do next? I feel very stuck. The idea is that they somehow get a random card, they save it (screenshot it or whatever) and then move on to the next checkpoint and get an additional card and then do that until the last checkpoint.

 

While also making sure it's not easy to cheat. Do I create a code for their account, can I somehow save a file for each account on the server to make sure they didn't cheat etc. I'm all out of ideas that are plausible for me to pull off alone.

 

I really appreciate your help!

[Sauron]

20 minutes ago, MorbidAngel said:

The idea is that they somehow get a random card, they save it (screenshot it or whatever) and then move on to the next checkpoint and get an additional card and then do that until the last checkpoint.

 

While also making sure it's not easy to cheat. Do I create a code for their account, can I somehow save a file for each account on the server to make sure they didn't cheat etc. I'm all out of ideas that are plausible for me to pull off alone.

The guests can be taken to a different page for each QR code they scan, the page then checks if they already have a card from that stand and if they don't it asks the backend to randomly generate one for them and save it in their database entry, so the operation can't be repeated. The page can then display the card they got whenever they refresh it or rescan the QR code. You can use mysql for the database, something like this would be really simple to setup.

[MorbidAngel]

3 minutes ago, Sauron said:

The guests can be taken to a different page for each QR code they scan, the page then checks if they already have a card from that stand and if they don't it asks the backend to randomly generate one for them and save it in their database entry, so the operation can't be repeated. The page can then display the card they got whenever they refresh it or rescan the QR code. You can use mysql for the database, something like this would be really simple to setup.

Yeah I think this is the route to go. Unfortunately I'm not sure I can code that much, but I have about two weeks to show off a demo or at least give a presentation of exactly how it will work when it's done.

 

Is it also possible for the users to log in to their account and see all their cards on the same page? So that they can see their "hand" if you know what I mean. Presumably by just taking the data from the database and showing it all on one page. And again, thank you for your help!

[Sauron]

15 minutes ago, MorbidAngel said:

Is it also possible for the users to log in to their account and see all their cards on the same page? So that they can see their "hand" if you know what I mean.

Of course, once you have the data you can display it however you want. You can use different QR codes to take you to different pages as I mentioned, then have those pages automatically redirect you to the home page where you can see the entire hand.

 

The only disadvantage is that if one knows the url to those pages they could skip visiting the stands, so make the URLs difficult to guess (a string of random letters as page name should work). Either way this wouldn't impact the final prize if everyone is meant to visit all the stands anyway.

[MorbidAngel]

7 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Of course, once you have the data you can display it however you want. You can use different QR codes to take you to different pages as I mentioned, then have those pages automatically redirect you to the home page where you can see the entire hand.

 

The only disadvantage is that if one knows the url to those pages they could skip visiting the stands, so make the URLs difficult to guess (a string of random letters as page name should work). Either way this wouldn't impact the final prize if everyone is meant to visit all the stands anyway.

Okay sweet I'll start working then and see what I can come up with! And yeah I'll have 5 different QR codes, one for each stand. And the URL's will be randomly generated strings or something that I can find online. Like one of those random password generators or whatever.