How To Make Online Examination System in PHP

Yesterday I taught you on How to Make a Certificate Validator in PHP. Today its a more complex one, an Online Examination System. I have made the same for my mini project and I would like to share the source code for all of you so that you could use it for your projects as well.
So we would wanna begin!

Online Examination System Abstract

Online Examination System is a real time project designed to automate the existing examination systems with enhanced security. It not only provides a proper control to the examiner, but also imparts a better examination time management strategy. The software is implemented with front end php and back end MySQL and works on all the latest windows platforms.

The unique feature of this software is that, it provides a triple interface for its users, one for the Administrator(the controller of the examination) , one for the Teacher(who prepare questions for the examination)and another for the Student(who writes the exam). Administrator manages the whole system. He can manage the teachers, subjects, examinations and the users(students). Whereas the teacher module can set questions for the examination in their respective subjects. Students can take the examination (provision for taking a sample test is also included so that the student can get an overall idea on how the examination system works before taking the actual examination).

The examination is powered by a java script timer so that the examination suspends as soon as the set timer is completed. The student has a provision to mark some questions under review so that he could check them for later. The passwords in the database are hashed using special character encryption so that no one can do an SQL injection attack to hack into the database which provides a security for the application. It also ensures that no malpractices are done by the students while taking the test. The exam automatically terminates after the allotted time schedule and a grade sheet is printed to the students. The questions can be of either single choice or multi choice and it can be decided by the administrator/teacher.

Here is a complete video demonstrating the online examination system and its features so that you could understand how it looks like when its deployed over a server.

Online Examination System Demonstration

Well, so you must have got an overall idea on how it works.
Now we can start it working on your local system, I mean a local server!

Step 1: Online Examination System Database Installation

Open up phpmyadmin Create a database called oes and import the sql file downloaded from here.
[If you don’t know how to open phpmyadmin refer my previous post ‘How to Make a Certificate Validator in PHP‘ .It has every instructions for creating a database and importing a sql file to it. If you can’t follow them, please let me know in comments.]

Online Examination System Table Description

I have used 8 tables in the OES database and these are their respective functions.
1. adminlogin : stores the admin username and password(hashed) . By default admin username is root and root.
2. question : stores all the questions, its choices and the correct answer.
3. student : stores the details of the students like student name, password, email, contact no. etc.
4. studentquestion : stores all the examination details of student like the test id, questions he marked for review, answered etc.
5.studenttest : stores the examination result of the student, how many questions he have corrected and so on.
6. subject : stores details of various subjects and their respective examiner/teacher ids.
7. test : stores details on test dates, test time etc.
8. testconductor : stores details of the test conductors (teachers).

Step 2: Online Examination System Installation

1. Now we need to deploy the application to localhost. Download the online examination system source code from here.
2. After that extract it to c://wamp/www .
(If you do not know what is WAMP or where to download WAMP, refer this article | If you are using xampp extract into c://xampp/htdocs | C: is where I installed WAMP or XAMPP, in your case it may be different!)
3. After extract open your browser and navigate to localhost/oes/
4. Refer the above video once more and see how it works.
5. To login as admin navigate to localhost/oes/admin and for examiner its localhost/oes/tc
 You are done!

Online Examination System Screen Shots