I developed this software as my bachelor thesis at the University of Paderborn. You can download the theoretical part - only in German - as PDF file. This application simulates pay-per-bid auctions for scientific experiments, which are configurable by a lot of different settings and parameters.

You need a webserver like Apache, PHP 5 and a database like MySQL. Furthermore you need to download Symfony 1.4, which is not included in the download above, and place it in the lib/vendor/symfony folder. You can download Symfony here: http://www.symfony-project.org/installation. I used version 1.4.11 for my thesis but any 1.4.x version should work.

To configure the database, please edit the config/databases.yml file and run the symfony task $ php symfony doctrine:build --all --no-confirmation. There is also some example data included via fixtures: $ php symfony doctrine:data-load.

To log into the backend you need a username and a password which can be added and changed in the apps/backend/config/app.yml file. The default username is admin with the password payperbid.

You have to configure your apache so that your url points to the web-folder. The software will not work inside sub folders. Here is my apache config:

Listen 127.0.0.1:8082
<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:8082>
  ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
  DocumentRoot "/home/florian/public_html/bachelor/web"
  DirectoryIndex index.php
  <Directory "/home/florian/public_html/bachelor/web">
    AllowOverride All
    Allow from All
  </Directory>
  
  Alias /sf /home/florian/public_html/bachelor/lib/vendor/symfony/data/web/sf
  <Directory "/home/florian/public_html/bachelor/lib/vendor/symfony/data/web/sf">
    AllowOverride All
    Allow from All
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Once installed you should reach the frontend under 127.0.0.1:8082 and the backend under 127.0.0.1:8082/backend.php. Sometimes it may help to call the development version: 127.0.0.1:8082/frontend_dev.php and 127.0.0.1:8082/backend_dev.php. You may also clear the cache with $ php symfony cc if you have any problems.

To stop auctions and for the automatic bidding bots a php script needs to be started in the background by the following command: $ php lib/daemon.php

For a more detailed intruction refer to the Symfony documentation: http://www.symfony-project.org/jobeet/1_4/Doctrine/en/01.

A brief introduction - only in German - for using the software is available in the appendix of my thesis (see link above). The backend is only in English, the frontend is currently available in English and German.

All code written by me is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.