Im lost

[spearchilduser]

Hi im looking to set up a booking a taxi system for the local taxi firms in my area . I woudl be running it through a website where the user will log on choose where they want to go when etcetc these details will be sent to all the taxi companies in the area ( there are only about 5 companies) they will provides quotes such as time est price etc then the user will accept which ever quote they want.

 

Now i know i need to proberbly store the details into a table then get the taxi companies to fill out the rest then provide the full details to the user to accept or decline but i dont know where to start i have all of the layouts ready but do i start by getting the user to enter the first details get them to be stored into a database then how would i get the companies to pick up the correct customer details any ideas?

 

Or are there anys cripts out there that i can use at all

 

 

Thank You

[Psycho]

I really think you are biting off more than you can chew at the moment. If you don't even know where to start then I assume that you don't have the skills/experience to tackle this right now. But, I will be happy to provide some "general" ideas.

 

First off you should determine the workflow before you start writing the code. Yes, you would start with the user entering in their request first. But, then how are the taxi companies going to "know" there is a quote waiting? Are you going to send them an email, do you expect them to constantly monitor a web page, or what? You could create an AJAX enabled page that will auto-update ever n minutes but it still requires someone to be there monitoring it. For someone needing a taxi it seems that the time to wait for the taxi companies to see that there is a request and respond - and then for the user to see that there are responses - would be too much trouble. If it were me I'd just call a taxi company and request a cab. The couple of dollars I could save by shopping around wouldn't be worth my trouble (but maybe that's just me).

 

Anyway, once you've worked out the process for the workflow you could then design the database structure. If you have no experience in this area I highly suggest you do some research. Building the wrong DB structure will limit what you can do and can have sever performance consequences.

 

Once you have both the workflow and the database design you cant then start developing.

 

Here is a rough draft of a potential workflow.

 

1. User signs-up on the site. You can make this optional, but this all depends on what you want the user to be able to do after they submit their request. If the user needs to get back to the site to review the quotes, having them associated with a user account is the preferred approach. If you make it anonymous, then you would want to get an email during the quote request process to send the user an email. That email can contain a link with the quote request ID for the user to access the quote.

 

2. Once the user submits their quote request you would store the appropriate record(s) for the quote and notify the taxi companies. Again, you need to determine how you will accomplish this: email, web-page, etc. You could do both.

 

3. Allow the taxi companies to submit their estimates. These would go into a separate table with a foreign key reference back to the quote request.

 

4. Notify the user that there are estimates submitted. I would suspect you would want to alert the user as soon as each estimate is submitted. From the user's standpoint I would hate to get 5 different emails, but you can't wait until all the taxi companies respond because there will be times when one or more do not. You also have decide how you will alert the user: email, text, web page, etc. Again, you can go with more than one, but you don't want to create a lot of "noise" for the user (IMHO).

 

5. Then, what happens when the user reviews the estimates. When the user selects one of the estimates you would again update the database. In this case you could probably update the main quote request to include a foreign key reference back to the estimate that was accepted. You then, again, need to alert the taxi company that their estimate was accepted. You may also want to alert the other companies that their estimates were rejected.

 

6. Lastly, you would want to send a confirmation back to the user. This may include a confirmation number or other info that the taxi company added when they confirmed the request.

 

This is just a very high-level analysis. You need to do your homework to identify what specific information is needed by both the users and the taxi companies and be sure you account for that in this process.

[litebearer]

AND $$$$$ who pays what to whom, when and how. Any potential liabilities for no-show/scam call/ etc ect?