programming a fantasy sports site

April 25, 2008 10:18 AM

Can you help me find a tutorial (or book) on the design and programming of a fantasy sports site? (My google-fu is failing me on this one)

Also useful: If you can point out an open source program that I can study.

posted by vega to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Where are you starting from? Your current level of ability is the huge factor in this question...
posted by tmcw at 10:33 AM on April 25

I've done some programming, mainly as a hobby, in Java. Also I have experience with php/mysql and with Ruby on Rails; I'm not an expert but I've built web applications from scratch before...
posted by vega at 11:09 AM on April 25

This is a very broad question. Have you mapped out the rules of the game on paper yet? Points or roto? Draft or auction? Redraft or keeper? Most importantly, where do you plan on getting stats?

I suspect that what you're looking for does not exist.
posted by mkultra at 11:42 AM on April 25

If you can point out an open source program that I can study.

phpffl - Though the code is currently being refactored to use CakePHP.
posted by danOstuporStar at 12:31 PM on April 25

You're basically asking "Help me find a book about building three bedroom, two bathroom house. I've done carpentry in my spare time before."

Writing an app as complicated as a fantasy sports league is not small potatoes, and if you don't have more specific questions than this, you're probably not even in the right ballpark in terms of the knowledge or ability required to actually complete the project. (I don't mean for that to sound snarky or offensive)

That said, writing a fantasy sports site isn't really that different from writing any other sort of data-driven site, it's just a creative way to manipulate a data source. You'd build that site the way you'd build any other site.
posted by toomuchpete at 5:25 PM on April 25