Views: Only show 3 largest values and their sum per user

Question

I am creating a scoreboard website for fisherman that shows the sum of their top catches for the day. A custom content type allows the anglers to upload a photograph, fish type, and fish length numerical value (DONE). Anglers may upload as many catches per day (DONE) as they want. I have Views showing me all fish caught (DONE). I have Views_Calc showing me data about "all fish caught" per day (DONE).

However, I only want to calculate, display, and store in the database the SUM of the X longest fish an angler has caught that day.

So, I'm trying to build:

1) A View ranking anglers by the sum of their, say, 5 longest fish caught per day.

Consider that some anglers may have a tough day fishing and only be able to upload, say, 3 fish per day. Conversely (and this is the situation I am having trouble rendering) an angler may submit, say, 14 fish caught that day but I only want to display the sum of the 5 longest.

I would like the SUM to be a database entry so it is accessible via Views for other purposes.

The rendering may look like:

RANK   |  ANGLER NAME  |  5 LONGEST FISH
  1    |  John Smith   |   49.75 inches
  2    |  Joe Blow     |   47.25 inches
  3    |  Kevin Jones  |   42.50 inches
  4    |  Dave Craig   |   37.75 inches
...

Any pointers? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

If you don't want to build a custom module I would think Rules is your best bet. Also install Conditional Rules as what you will be doing will requires logic a bit difficult to accomplish with Rules alone.

I will create a Result content type that will hold the aggregated result for the day per angler, as well as entity references to the fish content type. Then, after the angler uploaded a new entry, the rule will cycle through the related fish types and do the Maths and store the result in the result field.