phillipdwright/mm_comp

Database setup and back-end code for March Madness competition

mm_comp

A collection of scripts for database setup and back-end maintenance for Roanoke College's March Madness competition, using score data scraped from ESPN's scoreboard website

Installation

This will install the mm_comp project to your default install location for third-party Python modules.

To install, run:

git clone https://github.com/phillipdwright/mm_comp.git
cd mm_comp
python setup.py install

To uninstall, run:

pip uninstall mm_comp

Getting Started

First, create the database required for the competition, run bowl.sql. Next, set up db_connector.py and update_email.py in your project root directory. db_connector.py should contain a dictionary of parameters to connect to the database you created. update_email.py should contain a url called points_update that will call an update script and a function called email_report that takes an email string as a parameter and sends an email containing this email string as the body.

Usage

Once the back-end database is created and ESPN has published information for the tournament, change dates.py to show the tournament dates for each round.

• getteamids.py will obtain data on all teams in the tournament from espn.com. This is a setup script and will only need to be run once.
• addespnids.py writes the teams ids from espn.com to the competition website. This is a setup script and will only need to be run once.
• checkUsageOverlap.py reports on the overlap between entries in the competition. This script can be run once users have submitted entries into the competition.
• update_wins.py checks ESPN's scoreboard and updates the database with current score information, if any games have completed since the last update. This should be scheduled to run periodically (eg., every 30 minutes) throughout the tournament to update the competition website regularly.
• update_possible.py is called by update_wins.py if any games have completed since the last update. This script updates the database with accurate figures for the maximum number of points a competitor may be able to obtain through the remainder of the tournament.

Compatibility

This project was developed using Python 3.4 and is compatible with versions 3.4 and 3.5.

Credits

• Phil Wright: Developed the update code to manage the competition using ESPN
• David Taylor: Developed the database and the website to run the competition