Make a ticket booking site with Textpattern

vineonardo · 2012-11-18 11:21:45

Hello, I’ve been asked to develop a site which will be used for local movie ticket booking. It will have following features:

Online tickets booking(obviously)
Selection of seats or view availability of seats in theatre
Calendar wise shows available for a theatre
Movie rating and comments by users
Theatre page to see what shows are on
Search by Location, movie title, actors etc.

Right now, we’re just in a concept development phase but I need to decide which platform to use.
As I love Textpattern, it was the first one I thought about but I’ve never done something as big as this one with Txp.
I’m also considering Wordpress as they have lots of plugins for calendars, profile management(this will be future feature), etc.

So my question is, can I make this using Textpattern?
I feel I can, but then I need to know what all things(plugins, code snippets, tricks) I will need to do in order to build it?

How would you do it? Thanks for your time.

aslsw66 · 2012-11-19 11:48:33

As this is clearly a database-intensive project (theatres, movies, sessions, tickets, etc), don’t forget a few great plugins that give you the ability to manage custom database tables.

In other words, create your own custom tables in the Textpattern database, and then use:

mem_simple_form to enter and update data,
smd_query to retrieve and format data (using any valid SQL statements), and
adi_gps to pass variables through URL query strings.

For bookings, it sounds like you will need some form of registration system to allow users to create and manage their own profiles and bookings:

mem_self_register is for self-registration of users,
ign_password_protect allows you to protect parts of a page for registered members (eg. the “buy a ticket” function),
smd_user_manager and smd_bio allows you to extend user details.

I know there is a mailing list plugin out there, but I’m not sure to what extent it integrates with Textpattern’s user table (eg. to send out offers, reminders etc).

This looks like a big job. My advice is to approach it in the same way that you would eat an elephant – one bite at a time! In other words, sketch out the functionality you need working from the inside out and then build each component in turn, initially testing each component individually and then in combination.

vineonardo · 2012-11-19 12:11:21

Hey aslsw66,
Thanks for the reply. I really find your answer very informative and also like the approach you told.
You guessed correct about the user profiles, it’s something I’ve never done with Textpattern.

I was wondering how will I be maintaining a seat availability log? It would be great if it would be in a visual way where users can click on seats they want(can be a check box) and then buy tickets.

But again this will have to be done for every theatre and seats and their arrangements will vary.

I would love to hear your thoughts about it.

Last edited by vineonardo (2012-11-19 12:12:44)

aslsw66 · 2012-11-19 12:48:31

I’ll confess that I’m not really sure. However some initial thoughts are:

start with your theatres (assuming there is more than one),
come up with a way of uniquely identifying each seat. If there are many (again, I assume so) then it might be impractical to create a separate field or table for every seat! But you could use a naming convention to identify seats within each theatre eg. rows (A-Z) and seat numbers (1-30). This might be harder if you have some rows with more or less seats than others but again you could find a way of making his happen,
that information would allow you to graphically display a theatre layout (using something like rah_repeat),
when a user selects a seat, a table would be populated with: user id, theatre, row and seat number. Of course, checking against that table would allow you to check whether a seat has been previously selected and disable it.

Something like this:

Theatre (rows, seat numbers) -> Bookings (user, theatre, row, seat number) <- User (user id, other stuff)

I really think the key challenge is not to feel overwhelmed by all of this but to just put some time into planning it properly.

vineonardo · 2012-11-19 13:13:12

Oh, wow, it’s really great that you’re here to help.
Now I exactly understand the depth of this project.
I guess the best thing to do now would be to short list all the most important features first.
I wish to thank you once again, especially for introducing with great plugins(like rah_repeat) which I had hardly thought of using, rather I was unaware with what exactly to use them for.

I suppose this project will be a real challenge and would help me to learn Textpattern better.

Thank you for your time, I’ll will keep you posted about the project development related things.

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#1 2012-11-18 11:21:45

Make a ticket booking site with Textpattern

#2 2012-11-19 11:48:33

Re: Make a ticket booking site with Textpattern

#3 2012-11-19 12:11:21

Re: Make a ticket booking site with Textpattern

#4 2012-11-19 12:48:31

Re: Make a ticket booking site with Textpattern

#5 2012-11-19 13:13:12

Re: Make a ticket booking site with Textpattern

Board footer