[drupal-devel] interest match

[Gudmund Vatn]

Hi all. Hopefully I won't be bothering anyone with this post (I figure you 
might want this in forum, but I figure the feedback wouldn't be 
overwhelming).

I'm almost finished creating an interest match module (current source 
available for limited time [1]) and wonder if or how it could be useful, and 
hope to be able to contribute it. It currently works something like this:

The administrator create and manage subject fields which the users may rate 
their interest in. The users may after they have rated their interest in the 
available subjects find users with similar interests. The search is 
currently done through a single query looking up all subject fields the 
current user has rated his/her interest in, finds all other ratings of those 
subjects, groups the difference by SUM(ABS(rating - currentuser_rating)) as 
matchvalue by user and orders by matchvalue.

Example______
A: interest in movies (5), books (0), computers (3)
B: interest in movies (4), books (2), computers (3)
C: interest in movies (0), books (5), computers (0)

A search for matches should show B is best match, then C.
B: total(movies (4-5), books (2-0), computers (3-3)) = 3
C: total(movies (0-5), books (5-0), computers (5-3)) = 12

It is thus possible for instance to have a block showing best match of users 
online etc.

Could this fit into Drupal somewhere? I figure a good use would be for a 
dating site, but I suppose other community sites also could use this 
ability. I am aware of the profile module and it's use for instance on 
drupal.org <http://drupal.org>, however, this provides a "total" matchvalue 
of users in a snap, and because of it's nature should be treated seperately 
from the profile module. The administration is much simpler. Furthermore, 
the profile module lacks the ability to find matching users in this modules 
manner.

First, I would appreciate suggestions on good ways to integrate, second I 
would like to be able to contribute the module when ready. As you may have 
guessed, I am in the process of setting up a dating service. For this site I 
will probably create a relationship module where the admin would be able to 
define relationshiptypes users may put other users (with additional 
features), as well as use the profile module btw.

Thanks for reading.
Adagio [2]

[1] http://www.mypastebin.com/?code=1880021952
[2] http://drupal.org/user/20636
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