Many a times you may have come across a fancy “Live Score Board”, recently (as of writing) you may have seen the “Java Applet”ized score board. If you want to have a similar such app, but don’t want to get into Java and applets. You may wonder.

But there is a solution, Asynchronous Javascript HTTP Request calls, you may commonly now it AJAX, or famous as XMLHttpRequest

… and make something like

You can find working example here, Live Score Board

For your live Score Board App, you need following .

• A Score Server, which gives scores in a specific format, ideally XML
• A Client that requests the Server, and displays the parsed XML

We need a Server or a web Service, that will give us the requested data. We’ll use XML to output the response of the server.
We’ll structure the XML as follows

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<scores xmlns="http://www.ruturaj.net/tutorials/php">
<match elapsedtime="1.5h" round="semifinal" category="singles" sex="women">
	<player name="Hingis" serving="1">
		<set no="1">6</set>
		<set no="2">3</set>
		<set no="3">4</set>
		<gamepoints>30</gamepoints>
	</player>
	<player name="Sharapova">
		<set no="1">4</set>
		<set no="2">6</set>
		<set no="3">2</set>
		<gamepoints>15</gamepoints>
	</player>
</match>
</scores>

Assume that we have a database, which is fed continuously. Say we access the above data using the URL as.. http://www.ruturaj.net/tennis/score_server.php?round=semifinal&category=singles&sex=women&player=hingis

Here is a test score_server.php script for testing.

<?php

$array_points = array(15, 30 , 40);
$gamepoints1 = array_rand($array_points, 1);
$gamepoints2 = array_rand($array_points, 1);
$xml = '<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<scores xmlns="http://www.ruturaj.net/tutorials/php">
<match elapsedtime="1.5h" round="semifinal" category="singles" sex="women">
	<player name="Hingis" serving="1">
		<set no="1">6</set>
		<set no="2">3</set>
		<set no="3">4</set>
		<gamepoints>'.$array_points[$gamepoints1].'</gamepoints>
	</player>
	<player name="Sharapova">
		<set no="1">4</set>
		<set no="2">6</set>
		<set no="3">2</set>
		<gamepoints>'.$array_points[$gamepoints2].'</gamepoints>
	</player>
</match>
</scores>
';

header("Content-Type: text/xml");
echo ($xml);
?>