attendance-tracker-php

A small PHP + MySQL attendance and staff-details tracker: session-based login, daily attendance logging, a staff details register, a live dashboard, and CSV export.

Contents

• Features
• Project structure
• Local setup
• Demo login
• Database schema
• API / endpoint reference
• Deploying a live demo (InfinityFree)
• Security notes
• License

Features

• Login/session auth (index.php, home.php)
• Mark and view daily attendance (attendance.html, add_attendance.php, get_attendance.php)
• Staff details register (details.html, add_details.php, get_details.php, get_details_by_id.php)
• Dashboard with present/absent counts (dashboard.html, dashboard.php)
• CSV export of any table (records.html, download.php)

All database access goes through a single shared PDO connection (connection.php) using parameterized queries throughout.

Project structure

.
├── index.html / index.php        # Login page + auth handler, sets the session
├── home.php                      # Post-login shell; loads the other pages into an iframe
├── attendance.html                # Mark/view attendance (calls add_attendance.php, get_attendance.php)
├── details.html                   # Staff details register (calls add_details.php, get_details.php, get_details_by_id.php)
├── dashboard.html / dashboard.php # Present/absent summary widget
├── records.html / download.php   # CSV export of any allow-listed table
├── connection.php                 # Single shared PDO connection, reads db_config.php
├── db_config.example.php          # Template you copy to db_config.php (gitignored)
├── database/
│   └── attendance_manager.sql     # Schema + fabricated sample data (3 tables)
├── .gitignore
├── LICENSE
└── README.md

Local setup

1. Requires PHP 8+ with pdo_mysql, and MySQL or MariaDB (e.g. via XAMPP).
2. Create a database and import the schema + sample data:

   mysql -u root -p < database/attendance_manager.sql
   

3. Copy the DB config template and adjust if your credentials differ from the XAMPP defaults:

   cp db_config.example.php db_config.php
   

4. Serve the folder with your PHP server (e.g. place it in XAMPP's htdocs/, or php -S localhost:8000).
5. Open index.html and log in with the demo credentials below.

Demo login

• Username: admin
• Password: demo123

This is sample data for local evaluation only — change it before using this anywhere beyond your own machine. Passwords in this project are stored and compared in plaintext by design (kept simple for a demo); don't reuse this pattern for anything handling real user data.

Database schema

Three tables, created and seeded by database/attendance_manager.sql:

attendance

Column	Type	Notes
id	int	primary key, auto-increment
name	varchar(255)	staff member name
date	date
time	tinytext
attendance	varchar(255)	Present / Absent

details

Column	Type	Notes
id	int	primary key, auto-increment
name	varchar(255)
dob	text	DD-MM-YYYY
phone	varchar(20)
email	varchar(255)
institution	varchar(255)
status	varchar(20)	active / inactive
role	varchar(50)	admin / user
timestamp	timestamp	defaults to CURRENT_TIMESTAMP

users

Column	Type	Notes
id	int	primary key, auto-increment
username	varchar(50)	unique
password	varchar(255)	plaintext (see Security notes)

API / endpoint reference

Endpoint	Method	Purpose	Request	Response
index.php	POST	Log in	form fields username, password	redirect to home.php on success, or index.html?error=1
add_attendance.php	POST	Record one attendance entry	form fields name, date, time, attendance	plain-text confirmation or error
get_attendance.php	GET	List attendance, newest first	—	{ "attendance": [ { name, date, time, attendance }, ... ] }
add_details.php	POST	Add/update a staff details record	form fields name, dob, phone, email, institution, status, role	redirect back to the referring page
get_details.php	GET	List all staff details	—	pre-rendered <tr> HTML rows (server-escaped)
get_details_by_id.php	GET	Look up one staff record	query param id	JSON object, or empty string if not found
get_names.php	GET	Names for the attendance dropdown	—	{ "names": [ "Alex Carter", ... ] }
dashboard.php	GET	Summary counts	—	{ totalCandidates, present, absent }
download.php	POST	Export a table as CSV	form field table_name (must be attendance, details, or users)	CSV file download

All endpoints except index.php expect an active PHP session (set on login) and read/write through the shared $pdo connection.

Deploying a live demo (InfinityFree)

1. Create a free account at infinityfree.net and create a new hosting subdomain.
2. In the control panel, create a MySQL database and note the host/database name/username/password it gives you (these are different from your local XAMPP values).
3. Open phpMyAdmin from the control panel and import database/attendance_manager.sql into that database.
4. Upload every file in this repo except db_config.example.php's local values — instead, create db_config.php on the server (via the online file manager or FTP) using the MySQL credentials InfinityFree gave you in step 2.
5. Visit your InfinityFree subdomain and log in with the demo credentials above.

Security notes

• index.php and download.php previously built SQL queries via raw string interpolation of POST data (SQL injection). Both now use parameterized queries / a table-name allow-list.
• get_details.php now escapes output with htmlspecialchars(), and attendance.html builds table rows via textContent instead of innerHTML, closing a stored-XSS gap where staff details or attendance records could have injected HTML/script into the page.
• Database credentials are no longer hardcoded — see db_config.example.php.
• Replaced the deprecated FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING (removed in PHP 9) and unified all database access from a mix of mysqli/PDO onto a single PDO connection.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.