quiz/test -> general newbie question

[kubik]

hi there!

now here's a weird question (all you php pros, put down the coffee mugs + hold on to your chair, you're probably gonna be "rofl'ing" your booties of) 😃 ... i'm a freelance designer (= pixel-pusher, non-programmer) with a decent understanding of actionscript and pretty good html knowledge (no wysiwyg) ... i'm currently working on a pro-bono site for a local non-profit in my home town and as part of the site, i'm trying to put together a survey/quiz thingie.

i have a decent understanding of what php is and what it can do but (right now) i couldn't write a one-line php script if my life depended on it ... what i do know is that what i'm trying to do needs to run on a linux server and it should work with php + creating/writing to/reading from flat text files, no database (too complex, not enough time.)

my question now is ... is this something i might be able to put together within three weeks (using code snippets etc.)? and what are the best sources for a php-worm like me to get started? i'd be eternally + hugely grateful if someone could eventually list a couple of sites, boards etc. where i might get started on this ... thanks a ton in advance!!

cheers,

kubik 🙂

• here comes the (brief ??) description ... the closest example i can think of to describe it would be one of those "psychological test" things you sometimes see in womens magazines (you take the test, get a point score for each answer and get the "test analysis" based on your total point score) ... here's what i was thinking of ...
  
  

  1. no login/pass ... it's open to the public

  2. before the survey starts, the user has two choices:

  option 1: run through the survey automatically (going through the points described below) and get an automated answer (see "9." + "10." below)

  option 2: have all his answers recorded, provide his name and email and be contacted by one of the organizations' specialists to discuss the results - in this case, the survey answers + the user info should be emailed to the organization for processing ...

  3. each user who takes the survey should be assigned a unique number ("un", see "8." below)

  4. it's going to be a multi-page form thing with 4 sections (each section on one page) with approx. 8-10 questions each

  5. each question will have no more than 5 possible answers

  6. radio buttons only, each question allows only one answer

  7. all questions of each section must be answered - or "no proceed to next section"

  8. each possible answer should have a point value assigned to it - the points should be added up after the user submits a completed section and the results should be written to a text file ... in a format that would look something like this:

     [FONT=courier new](un=unique number, s=section, q=question, a=answer, p=points)

     un, s1q01a2, p=4
     un, s1q02a1, p=2
     .
     .
     .
     un, s1q10a4, p=12[/FONT]

  9. then, the points (p) for each section (s) should be added up and written to that file separately, maybe like this? ...

     [FONT=courier new]un, s1total, p=42[/FONT]

  10. after the user has completed all 4 sections, a script should read out the totals for each section and, depending on the point value, display an "anlysis text" read from a text file ... expl.: if section one has a maximum total point value of 60 points, i would have 4 separate text files (s1_txt01.txt, ..., s01_txt04.txt) containing the "analysis text" to be displayed on the final "analysis" page

      [FONT=courier new]if (points_s01) < 15, display "s1_txt01.txt" on the "analysis page"
      if (points_s01) < 30, display "s1_txt02.txt" on the "analysis page"
      if (points_s01) < 45, display "s1_txt03.txt" on the "analysis page"
      if (points_s01) < 60, display "s1_txt04.txt" on the "analysis page"[/FONT]

  so the final "analysis" page would need to display the contents of four text files (one for each section of the survey) that are chosen depending on the point value the user reached for each of the sections ...

  11. it would be perfect if a script could create one text file for each user taking the survey (there won't be more than 50 or so people taking this) and write the following addtl. info into each of the files ...
      
      • date and time when the survey was taken
      • originating ip address
      • user agent (browser)

  so, the entire survey would "only" be six pages ...

  page 1 - choose your option
  pages 2-5 - one page for each section of questions
  page 6 - "analysis" page for option 1, or "someone will contact you shortly" page for option 2 [/COLOR]

[rpanning]

It all depends on how well you know PHP to determin how long it will take to write this. Also, it depends on how complex you need it (I havn't had time to look at your reqirements). I think it should be possible to write this under 3 weeks, depending on how much time u put in.

If you don't have the time to write a script check out this site:
http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/Tests_and_Quizzes/

Hope this helps!

[FrozNic]

ima say it could take 2 hours or less for someone who knew what they were doing to write the whole thing, most of what your asking to do, is basic html/php nothing to advanced in there... maybe a couple special functions... striptags, htmlspecialchars, addslashes to garauntee correct data, date function, a couple if then clauses, a couple incriment variables to count your answers... it's all pretty simple.. you make the html page, and once u've done that, have the submit buttons submit to a php page, and if you don't know what to do after that... ask! 🙂 the forum rocks if you're not asking us to do your homework 😉

[kubik]

hi froznic!

thanks for the answers (of course - big thanks to rpanning as well!) - that's exactly the encouragement i was hoping for 😃

• i the forum rocks if you're not asking us to do your homework[/i]

uh, uh - i hope my post didn't give anyone the impression that i was looking for someone to "do my homework" for me, that was not at all the intention 🙂 - the intention was to find out if this is something i should even attempt to tackle, or simply tell my client "sorry guys, no can do" because if there's one thing i don't do (even for a pro bono project) is to make promises that i'm not gonna be able to keep ...

so my post above was basically the "do you guys think i could do this" question ... "feasibility - check." 🙂

now, i do know a thing or two about information architecture in general and concepting stuff - what i have no clue about is whether or not my concept will work in combination with "flat files + html + php" ... therefore, following the "feasibility question", here comes the "proof of concept question" 😃

i'd be extremely grateful if you guys could take a critical peek at this "concept overview" (gif, 110k) ... i did this to wrap my head around this and to explain to the client how their idea might pan out online ... and i promise, it's "real' pretty", too 😃

that should be a reasonable description of what this thing-survey-quiz-test thingie is supposed to do and how it's supposed to behave.

and if, based on that info, you could give a hint as to where and how to get started on this (i already did the basic html, form wrappers, form elements, dummy content, etc.) i would be eternally grateful!!

all i could ever ask for would be a couple of pointers towards tutorials on "how to create a text file with php", "how to do basic calculations (adding, subtracting etc.)", "validating form input" etc., etc. ... maybe i looked in all the wrong places, but i feel like i "googled" my butt off ... and it seems next to impossible to find info, tutorials, etc. that a half-witted pixel-pusher like me can digest 😕

big thanks in advance, cheers and greetings from germany 🙂 ,

kubik

[run_GMoney]

Head to the tutorials section of http://www.phpfreaks.com. They have tutorials written by the page creators as well as user-submitted tutorials. It's always my first stop. I believe I've seen tuts on both working with text files and form validation.

[kubik]

run_GMoney - thanks a bunch!! i already checked it out, and it looks to me like the tutorials along with the code library will cover quite a few of my questions 🙂

big thanks + cheers,

kubik

any additional tips/pointers/sites would be greatly appreciated 😃