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The major features that required the most attention to improve from prototype to beta version included logging in, searching for events, creating events, and uploading songs. We implemented the login system using a simple php library called Light OpenID. Specifically, we limited the available Open ID providers to Google, allowing the user to log in with his or her Google account. Once the Light Open ID library had authenticated the user's credentials, we gathered the necessary user information from the authentication request and stored it in a loosely encrypted form using a PHP Session.
To enable search, we developed a simple algorithm to scan all available event data for strings matching the user input. The application used PHP to connect to a MySQL database, so we used the SELECT SQL query with regular expressions to allow for dynamic search capabilities. To create events we used the CREATE SQL query, submitting text data for the basic information of the event. Since the flyer image was binary data, we used a BLOB column to store it in the database along with the rest of the event information.
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