I have a question regarding question branching. I have a survey I'm trying to build that has questions that looks like this:
1. This is the main question.
a. this is an answer
1. this is a sub answer
2. this is a sub answer
b. this is an answer
1. this is a sub answer
2. this is a sub answer
So what would happen in this scenario is the respondant would pick either a or b. I would like only a and b to show initially. Then once the pick one of them, let's say a numbers 1 and 2 under a would show. I think this can be done with page branching but I would rather not use page branching within questions. Page branching is better for going from one questions to another on a different page based on an answer but I wouldn't want to use it for within the same question. Is this possible and if not is there a word around within survey monkey that doesn't require bouncing around to different pages?
You can use Skip Logic, which is Question Branching, but it is only available for paid Survey Monkey plans.
The basics of Skip Logic: Respondents are directed through different paths of a survey based on how they answer.
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I am trying to implement a feature to my project (kind of like a social media site) that could be either basic or complex and I am not sure if I am going to take forever reinventing the wheel or just go on a crazy tangent that won't work. I just need to "check in" so to say.
I am going to use Facebook terminology as an example to simplify the concept but implement similar features with different names. In Facebook you have Pages and Groups, which are similar yet have slight differences (from now, I will call the collection of these DataSets). Both of these can have multiple admins or followers, which are all User roles, and each User can have roles for multiple Groups and multiple Pages (one role per Group or Page). Then for example, you can click a drop down to change your account to post as a Page you are an admin for.
Essentially, the concept I am describing is where a single User can have a role for multiple different types of DataSets. For example, a single User could follow 30 different Pages and 10 different Groups, and be an admin for one Group and two Pages. Does the concept I am describing belong to a particular concept or software design pattern? I am finding it really hard to describe this feature without using Facebook examples.
I have a strategy to implement this type of functionality in Rails, but I feel like using this strategy would be making the problem harder than it is and there is a fancy rails way of doing it, or a Gem, but I just don't know how to research it due to lack of terminology to describe my problem.
Current strategy is:
I have a Users table from Devise. Pages and Groups are each individual models and have their own tables. I have matching database tables to make the many-to-many relationships between Pages and Users, along with Groups and Users (e.g. 3 column design, column for the user_id, column for the page_id and the type of relationship such as admin or follower). Let's call these Group_User and Page_User. I am being flexible at the moment as I may add more DataSets similar to Page and Group.
Then for the Devise User table, I have an extra two columns to track the DataSet that the User is an admin for and currently posting as. One column is for the DataSet type and the other for the id for this instance (e.g. [Group,1] is stored in these two columns to represent Group with group_id:1 and [Page,3] is used to represent Page with page_id:3). These two columns can be checked when displaying options relevant for admins in that Group/Page and a simple drop down at the top of the site changes the values in these columns to any of the Pages/Groups the logged in User is an admin for. This way, one User login can take on many admin roles and change between these easily as needed.
Is there a better way to do this in Rails, such as a gem or specific design pattern? Or am I on track to implement these features myself? I think I understand the problem but my solution just seems simple/raw and possibly might have unintended consequences later down the track (e.g. it seems database intensive).
One way I was thinking of doing this was making a concern that includes methods to build the relationships and pass in the name of the DataSet as an argument, just so I am not rewriting the same methods for Pages, then Groups, then whatever comes next.
I looked at other solutions such as polymorphic typing (which I think is good for if each user only had one role or only managed relationships for one group or one page) and Single Table Inheritance (but I think my Pages and Groups might be too different for this to work). I thought about using inheritance as well (e.g. a parent for both Group and Page) but I am not sure this helps much.
I am just a guy that studied too much computer science and not enough software engineering. Any tips on how to simplify this problem or just a simple "yeah that will work" would be really helpful!
I think you are going great in the database design. Once participated in a social media application like yours which had similar type of design. Your design seems much better than the one I worked with. In my opinion this type of applications are supposed to be database extensive.
There are several design patterns used in RoR. One I heavily use is Service Object Pattern to maintain thin controller and models. Also it helps me to write reusable class.
Another one I like is the Presenter Pattern to simplify views.
You can have a details look at this blog post for more design pattern ideas.
Please could you help me to think about how best to layout a form.
I have a series of checklist boolean questions (for example, do you want data?). If the answer is yes, I want to show questions further relating to data.
I have a form with the series of boolean questions and another form with the follow up questions to be shown if the answer is true at the top level.
How do I go about revealing the detailed follow up questions if the answer at the top is true?
I tried if true then -- a link to the follow up form, but I'm either expressing it incorrectly or approaching the layout all wrong. I've seen some questions in this post describing methods to help with the reveal, but I don't follow the reasoning behind why.
Thank you.
It sounds like you will need a large nested form, or multiple smaller forms.
You have 2 simple options:
Use Javascript to hide/show nested questions when some checks a box. here is an example: https://stackoverflow.com/a/6358754/1536309
Create a wizard! think about how your form can be completed in a few stages instead of at one time. https://github.com/schneems/wicked this is a good gem for building wizards. You could have each checkbox and its related information be a stage in the wizard, then the last page would submit the entire form contents.
I have a problem about the nested forms, which I've survey for some possible solutions (Nested form gem, Railscasts) but still have no idea to implement it.
My question is totally based on the solutions above, so please read it if you need :)
Now, my question is:
If i want to add/edit "only one" Question(and it's Answers) per page after I "create/edit" a Survey how could I make it?
In other words, there is only one Question(but could have dynamic numbers of Answers) fields, in the "create/edit" Survey page.
And how to make
add another question,
edit previous question or
remove current question
functions.
I've try to solve this by 2 ways, one is using javascript to hide the previous question each time I add a new one, but in this schema, I can't make my way to edit the existed question.
Another is using Ajax, but ... I have no idea with it.
First time posting in Stack Overflow, hope I'm doing this right.
I'm writing an app with Ruby on Rails right now. Without disclosing too much, the premise is that we have organizations and normal users. Organizations have events, which require users to answer a questionnaire before participating.
I'm pretty sure about these models / relationships that I will be using (this isn't really that important/pertinent to my question i think, but just wanted to give background):
organization (one to many) events
event (one to one) quesitonnaire)
questionnaire (one to many) users
(specific) response (one to one) user
The part I have a question about is how to implement the questionnaire. I want to give the ability to Organizations to essentially write / build their own forms. I'd like to stay away from them using code if that's possible (ie any DSL and whatnot).
I suppose the easiest way to do this is to give them a set number of text-area responses, so that I can consistently store the data and don't have to hassle around with how to configure storing this data (for example, maybe each event can only have exactly 5 responses to be filled in by textfield response by the user).
My ideal would be for the organization to be able to dynamically generate the forms on their own - maybe one questionnaire will have 1 text input, followed by 3 multiple choices, and maybe 2 short answers at the end; another one may have 5 multiple choices, and 1 short answer; yet another questionnaire might only have 1 text input...you get the idea.
So I see two parts of this problem - the first is the user interface for the organization to create the questionnaire. i'm imagining this wouldn't be terribly hard - ask them how many of each response type (MC, short answer) they would like to put into the form, give them the ability to rearrange them, etc.
The second part of the problem (what I'm more concenred about) is how to store/access this data. I'm guessing there's no dynamic-attribute sort of deal in ruby - storing some field with an unspecified number of parts and whatnot. i suppose i could make them all individual models (ie a question_response model, with :question, :response_type, :response, etc), but I'm fairly certain that's probably inefficient.
My initial guess is probably to serialize the data / use json; I worked briefly with Drupal 6 and this seems to be the way they did it. I was wondering if anyone else had any experience / suggestions though? I'm pretty new to Ruby so I was wondering if there's a gem out there or something that would help with what I'm trying to do.
Thanks!
You might want to look at the Surveyor gem
http://vimeo.com/7051279
*slightly old how-to video
https://github.com/breakpointer/surveyor
Surveyor does come with it's own DSL which is relatively easy to use (although can be abit restrictive at times). The data is saved as a set of question - answer values, so there is no actual specific model (beyond Surveys -> Questions (question_groups) -> Answers).
Originally I did look at having people submit their own Surveyor DSL specs - which would then be used to generate the actual survey via a Rake command.
I think if you need to build a dynamic model (and save the data) it is possible, although I am not not sure if you'll be able to get the Rake tasks to run to build the actual tables in a dynamic way due to permission restrictions.
Have a look at http://ruby-metaprogramming.rubylearning.com/ and Metaprogramming Ruby: Program Like the Ruby Pros by Paolo Perrotta, for some starters.
I asked a question earlier, and got an excellent response, but, being a newbie to Rails and still getting the basics down, I need someone to show me how to set up some scaffolding for the situation that Hates_ was nice enough to outline for me. I've set up my application and whatnot, but I basically want to have, for example purposes:
A "Stories" table, for a list of stories
A "Pages" table, for a list of pages that can be attached to stories
A "LinkedPages" table, to link one page to multiple other pages
The idea is that users can create Stories. Stories have Pages. Pages link to other Pages in a branching sort of way, and Hates_ suggested using a LinkedPages table to assist the process of determining which pages link to which other pages.
If someone could use the example models Hates_ provided on the link above (or give me better ones if needed), and just show me how to get this started, I'd be extremely grateful. Rails has had the highest initial learning curve of any programming or scripting language I've learned in the past, I'm just starting to understand many of the basics.
Thanks in advance!
Here is an updated fast paced video that quickly presents some of the wicked sweet features in Rails via a somewhat contrived Blog tutorial.
http://media.rubyonrails.org/video/rails_blog_2.mov
The presenter crams a lot of information into a very short time frame and does paste in some prepared code from time to time, but over all he hits on many of the key features.
He explains how to set up scaffolding as well in about probably the last 5 mins or so.