Course Enrolment Report (PHP Code Test)

Overview

This project is a sample course enrolment reporting system developed as part of a PHP skills-based competency test. The application demonstrates how to use PHP (no backend frameworks), MySQL, and basic frontend libraries to display enrolment and completion information for users enrolled in courses.

The system is designed with scalability and maintainability in mind, taking into account that enrolment data may grow to 100,000+ records.

---

Features

• Displays users enrolled in courses with their completion status

• Supports filtering by:

  • User name
  • Course name
  • Completion status (not started / in progress / completed)

• Pagination to handle large datasets efficiently

• Secure database access using PDO and prepared statements

• Clean code structure with separation of concerns

---

Technology Stack

• PHP: 7.4 / 8.1 (no backend frameworks)
• MySQL: Relational database
• Frontend: HTML, CSS, Bootstrap 5
• Database Access: PDO

---

Project Structure

course-report/
│
├── config/
│   └── database.php        # PDO database connection
│
├── public/
│   └── index.php           # Main report page
│
├── src/
│   └── Repository/
│       └── EnrolmentRepository.php
│
├── sql/
│   ├── schema.sql          # Database schema
│   └── seed.sql            # Sample data (100+ enrolments)
│
└── README.md

---

Running the Application

From the project root directory:

php -S localhost:8000 -t public

Then open your browser and navigate to:

http://localhost:8000

---

Performance Considerations

• Pagination is implemented using LIMIT and OFFSET
• Indexed columns on enrolments (user_id, course_id, completion_status)
• Filtering is performed at the SQL level, not in PHP memory

This ensures acceptable performance even with large datasets.

---

Security Considerations

• All database queries use prepared statements
• Output is escaped using htmlspecialchars() to prevent XSS
• Database errors are logged internally and not exposed to users

---

Notes

• No backend frameworks were used, as per the task requirements
• Frontend libraries were used only to improve usability and readability
• Code is organised to reflect real-world PHP project practices

---

Author

Developed as part of a technical assessment to demonstrate PHP, MySQL, and backend development fundamentals.