Application Design Recommendations

aaronm

Hello PHP Builder,

I've just started down this <?php road and I've been really struggling with a problem the last few days. Exhausted of things to try, I'm left asking, nay hoping you, the community can guide me in the right direction.

What I'm attempting to do is a simple survey regarding 15 military type items.
Each item is used by the armed forces and the goal is take input they have regarding said items.

I was able to get the initial survey part done without much trouble, of course my code is rather monolithic to say the least.

A link to that code is here.

A link to the output is here.

Once all of the items have been given an answer (using a drop down, 1 of 4 choices) they are entered into one table along with a timestamp and unique token to stop page refresh duplication.

This was fine until I got ready to move the data to the next requirement.

Now I need to take the results and sort by the 1-4 drop-down choice they provided and then present them back to the soldier in order for them to then choose another drop down value, a grouping if you will.

Well I'm pretty sure that means if I was going to sort on these 1-4 choices I couldn't just slam it all into one table so I normalized the data some and broke all of this stuff out into different tables. ie...Items, People, 1-4Choice, 1-3Choice_applied_to_sort_of_firstChoice, and Survey to house each decision.

From there I'm not sure what's the best angle of approach moving forward. I'm trying to avoid doing this way wrong out of the box.

I've been trying to use $_SESSION tokens with md5(uniqid) to keep each users answers together but as I run through the stages I keep getting the tokens regenerated.

Am I on the right track trying to use one multi-session page or is there an easier/efficient way?

I started fresh with this continued attempt in multi-page sessions but I haven't even got to the sql data insert part and already am struggling with how to store the data uniquely for each sessions answers.

Would anyone mind helping me understand an optimal way of designing such a questionnaire? Even if it's a framework idea that's sound I would appreciate your input.

Hooah,
-A

ixalmida

I don't think a "unique token" would necessarily prevent duplicate entries. You'd be better off having the user create a unique user ID or storing the user's name/unit/IP address as a unique key. Then simply check to see if those values are already in the table so a user can't easily duplicate a response. You can check a session ID from page to page just to see if the session is still alive, but I wouldn't rely on it for preventing duplicate entries in your case.

On another topic, it looks like your project is basically a survey system. That said, you might want to consider adding some Javascript functions. For example, there is no reason to POST and process a page in order to present a sub-selection. Simply populate several boxes using Javascript (note the similarities between Javascript and PHP syntax):

<script>
  function populateChoice2(value)
    {
    switch(value)
      {
      case "1":
        document.input1.choice2.options[0] = new Option("2", "Option 2", null);
        document.input1.choice2.options[1] = new Option("3", "Option 3", null);
        document.input1.choice2.options[2] = new Option("4", "Option 4", null);
        break;
      case "2":
        [ ETC...]
      }
    }

  function populateChoice3(value)
    {
    [ ETC...]
    }
</script>

<form name="input1">
<select name="choice1" onChange="populateChoice2(this.value);">
  <option value="1">Option 1</option>
  <option value="2">Option 2</option>
  <option value="3">Option 3</option>
  <option value="4">Option 4</option>
</select>

<select name="choice2" onChange="populateChoice3(this.value);"></select>
<select name="choice3"></select>
</form>

That's just a rough sketch, of course. You'll need to figure some of it out yourself. I would use arrays as much as possible for storing both the options in Javascript as well as the POST data.

aaronm

Thank you for the response ixal I had all but given up!

That code to populate a combo-box is very concise and I'll definitely find use for it.

I guess what I'm struggling with moslty is how to explain what I'm trying to achieve but I've come to grasp with that more over the last day or so.
I'm lost on how to layout the php to present the data in a two part flow.

STAGE 1

Product A ('1' drop down choice selected)
Product B ('3' drop down choice selected)
Product C ('2' drop down choice selected)
Product D ('1' drop down choice selected)
Product E ('4' drop down choice selected)

STAGE 2
-------(sorted by grouping in stage 1 then alpha)----
Product A ('1') -another drop down 1-3 this time
Product D ('1') -another drop down 1-3 this time

Product C ('2') -another drop down 1-3 this time

Product B ('3') -another drop down 1-3 this time

Product E ('4') -don't need one for a previously chosen '4'

DONE

So that's really what I'm trying to learn how to handle.
There a million survey scripts out there but I want the understanding of writing it myself.
I'll get it worked out eventually. 🙂

v/r,
Aaron

ixalmida

Most developers will probably understand what you are trying to accomplish better by looking at your code than by reading a long explanation, so don't be averse to posting your code here.