SportsCaster: The SportsDB Web Service

SportsCaster, also released under GNU GPL, is a Web Service that allows users to query SportsDB databases without writing custom SQL queries. Instead, users write URLs with easy-to-understand parameters. Content can be retrieved as SportsML, or can be rendered into HTML using "template views" and/or SportsMLT conversion scripts.

Downloads (Beta -- see readme.txt file inside)

• Alpha builds, use at your own risk
• 2009.05.15 Build
• Supports storing of SportsML in the database instead of the file system
• Now allows caching of results using APC (http://pecl.php.net/apc)
• Beta implementation of Search Stats and Get Standings
• Numerous bug fixes and performance enhancements
• 2009.01.08 Build
• Supports SQL Server now (in addition to MySQL)
• Includes "Query Debug Mode" which prints atop HTML views all the SQL queries used
• Renames "theme" parameter to be "gateway-theme"
• 2008.11.05 Build

Development

A home on SourceForge.net has been established to aid the SportsCaster development community.

Documentation

Full documentation can be found within SportsCaster's /test directory, so download the package and take a look.

SportsCaster is written in PHP using a package called CodeIgniter that follows the Model-View-Controller architectural pattern of programming. This system separates out the software into business-logic / database-access / content-rendering categories. The system has been popularized lately by Ruby-On-Rails, but predates that platform by many years.

When you install the SportsCaster set of PHP pages, you can build Views based on the PHP objects that get populated by database queries. SportsCaster includes a few samples of such Views in the /views directory.