Recruitment - the art of matching qualified applications to openpositions within an organization - is one of the most challenging tasks forany Human Resources department. However, powerful open-source tools likePHP and mySQL have made the process simpler, more efficient and moreeconomical than at any time in the past. This case study demonstrates how,by building a complete job listing and resume management system fromscratch.
With the database designed and out of the way, it's time to start writing some code to interface with it. The first script, "job_list.php", is the entry point to the application, and simply displays a list of available jobs, classified by department.
<?
// job_list.php - display list of open jobs
// includes
include("config.php");
include("functions.php");
?>
<html>
<head>
<basefont face="Verdana" size="2">
</head>
<body bgcolor=white>
<? $image="listings.jpg"; ?>
<? include("header.inc.php"); ?>
<?
// generate list
?>
<? include("footer.inc.php"); ?>
</body>
</html>
Each page generated through this application has a particular layout - a
blue banner at the top, a logo at the right, and a title (actually an image). The bottom of every page has a copyright notice and a disclaimer. Since these elements will remain constant, through the application, I've placed the corresponding HTML code in separate header and footer files, and simply include()d them on each page.
Again, by separating common interface elements into separate files, I've made it easier to customize the look of the application; simply alter these files, and the changes will be reflected on all the pages.
The variable $image stores the name of the image title for each page, and is used by "header.inc.php" - as you can see.
<!-- appears at the top of every page -->
<table bgcolor="6583C3" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td height=50 align=right> <img src="images/header.gif" alt=""
border="0"></td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>
<img src="images/<? echo $image; ?>" alt="" border="0">
<p>
<!-- end of header.inc -->
In addition, two other files, "config.php" and "functions.php" are also
included at the top of every page - they store database access information and useful functions, respectively.
<?
// config.php - useful variables
// database parameters
// alter this as per your configuration
$database="jobs";
$user = "root";
$pass = "";
$hostname = "localhost";
?>
Back to "job_list.php" - here's the code that takes care of connecting to
the database and actually generating the job listing.
<? include("header.inc.php"); ?>
<?
// open connection to database
$connection = mysql_connect($hostname, $user, $pass) or die ("Unable to
connect!");
// get list of departments with open jobs
$query = "SELECT DISTINCT id, department from department, listing WHERE
department.id = listing.fk_department";
$result = mysql_db_query($database, $query, $connection) or die ("Error in
query: $query. " . mysql_error());
// iterate through resultset
while(list($id, $department) = mysql_fetch_row($result))
{
// print department name
echo "<b>Department:</b> $department";
// look for jobs within the department and print as list
$query2 = "SELECT jcode, designation from listing WHERE
listing.fk_department = '$id'";
$result2 = mysql_db_query($database, $query2, $connection) or die ("Error
in query: $query2. " . mysql_error());
echo "<ul>";
while(list($jcode, $dsg) = mysql_fetch_row($result2))
{
echo "<li><a href=job_details.php?jcode=$jcode>$dsg ($jcode)</a>";
}
echo "</ul>";
echo "<p>";
}
// clean up
mysql_close($connection);
?>
<? include("footer.inc.php"); ?>
In this case, I've first queried the "listing" table for a list of
departments holding open jobs - note the DISTINCT keyword to eliminate duplicate entries. Then, for each of those departments, I've printed the job designation and job code, and linked it to a script which will display further information.
Here's what it looks like:
This article copyright Melonfire 2001. All rights reserved.
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