Question

I will be honest here – I am pretty sure I am not approaching this from the best method
I have a survey software I am working on that allows the owner to build questions of different input types (text, checkbox, radio…) text was very easy it searched question table and found the field ans_type which is what contains text, checkbox, radio… and output

                switch ($rowq['ans_type']) {
            case "text":
                echo '<tr bgcolor="#DDDDDD"  align="left" valign="middle"><td width="30"> </td> <td width="350">'.$rowq['question'].'</td><td width="350"><input class="tb8" type="text" name="quest[]" value="'.$rowa['answer'].'" size="40"></td></tr>';
            break;

so as you can see – rowq contains my question information while rowa contains answer information.

my problem has arrisen at checkbox and radio where we may have multiple options currently my table is set up like this to allow up to 15 options for checkbox and radio

CREATE TABLE `question` (
 `sid` int(10) NOT NULL,
 `qid` double(10,1) NOT NULL,
 `question` varchar(500) NOT NULL,
 `ans_type` varchar(100) NOT NULL,
 `opt_one` varchar(200) DEFAULT NULL,
 `opt_two` varchar(200) DEFAULT NULL,
 `opt_three` varchar(200) DEFAULT NULL,
 `opt_four` varchar(200) DEFAULT NULL,
 `opt_five` varchar(200) DEFAULT NULL,
 `opt_six` varchar(200) DEFAULT NULL,
 `opt_seven` varchar(200) DEFAULT NULL,
 `opt_eight` varchar(200) DEFAULT NULL,
 `opt_nine` varchar(200) DEFAULT NULL,
 `opt_ten` varchar(200) DEFAULT NULL,
 `opt_eleven` varchar(200) DEFAULT NULL,
 `opt_twelve` varchar(200) DEFAULT NULL,
 `opt_thirteen` varchar(200) DEFAULT NULL,
 `opt_fourteen` varchar(200) DEFAULT NULL,
 `opt_fifteen` varchar(200) DEFAULT NULL
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1

CREATE TABLE `answers` (
 `surveyid` int(10) NOT NULL,
 `question` double(10,1) NOT NULL,
 `answer` varchar(50000) DEFAULT NULL
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1

so I need to determine how many options are available for any given question for these types first – I figured I could have it only add the checkbox if rowq[‘…’] != NULL on each of the opt_numbers this doesnt fix my second problem though – If this survey has been filled out already and the person is editing it I need the boxes they already selected to be checked (for checkboxes this might be all 15 it might be 1 for radio naturally it will only be one) rowa[‘answer’] contains my answers which will be separated by a “,” would it be easier to just add opt_one-fifteen to answers and have them contain an int 1 or 0 based off checked or not checked.

I honestly don’t know where to go from this any help is appreciated – including changing my database around if there is a better method.

case "radio":

break;

Answer 1

I have a system that looks a bit like yours. The way I go about it, is letting each question row have a field answerTypes and a field answers. answerTypes is an array that tells which answers can be given to the question.

The system loops through the answerTypes array and fetches the appropriate answers that can be given from answers, e.g. if answerTypes is array(1,3), the answerTypes are radiobutton and text input.

answers then has all the “specific” settings for the different answerTypes, such as the max length of text inputs, the different names for checkboxes and different values for radiobuttons.

A little code snippet of how I do it:

  foreach($q->answerTypes AS $type) { 
          if($type == 1) { //radio buttons
            $ans = $q->answers['radioButton'];
            $return .= "<div class=\"radioButtonContainer\">";
            $return .= "<table><tbody>";
            foreach($ans AS $value=>$label) { 
              $return .= "<tr><td><label for=\"radiobutton_{$value}\">{$label}</label> </td><td><input id=\"radiobutton_{$value}\" type=\"radio\" name=\"radioButton\" value=\"{$value}\"".(($_POST['radioButton'] == $value) ? ' checked' : '')."></td></tr>";
            }
            $return .= "</tbody></table>";
            if(!empty($errl['radioButton'])) { 
              $return .= error($errl['radioButton'], 0, false);
            }
            $return .= "</div>";
          } elseif($type == 2) { //checkboxes
            $ans = $q->answers['checkbox'];
            $return .= "<div class=\"checkboxContainer\"><table><tbody>";
            foreach($ans['boxes'] AS $name=>$label) { 
              $return .= "<tr><td><label for=\"checkbox_{$name}\">{$label}</label> </td><td><input id=\"checkbox_{$name}\" type=\"checkbox\" name=\"checkbox_{$name}\" value=\"1\"".(($_POST['checkbox_'.$name] == "1") ? ' checked' : '')."></td></tr>";
            }
            $return .= "</tbody></table>";
            if(!empty($errl['checkbox'])) { 
              $return .= error($errl['checkbox'], 0, false);
            }
            $return .= "</div>";
          } elseif($type == 3) { //text input
            $ans = $q->answers['textInput'];
            $return .= "<div class=\"textInputContainer\">";
            if(!empty($ans['label'])) { 
              $return .= "<div class=\"textInputLabel\"><label for=\"textInput\">{$ans['label']}</label></div>";
            }
            if(isset($errl['textarea'])) { 
              $return .= error($errl['textarea'], 0, false);
            }
            $return .= "<input type=\"text\" onkeyup=\"countText($(this), $('#textInputChars'));\" id=\"textInput\" class=\"textInput\" name=\"textInput\" value=\"".htmlspecialchars($_POST['textInput'])."\"><br>
            <span class=\"smallText\"><span id=\"textInputChars\">".number_format(strlen($_POST['textInput']))."</span>/".number_format($ans['maxChars'])."</span></div>";
          } elseif($type == 4) { //textarea
            $ans = $q->answers['textarea'];
            $return .= "<div class=\"textareaContainer\">";
            if(!empty($ans['label'])) { 
              $return .= "<div class=\"textareaLabel\"><label for=\"textarea\">{$ans['label']}</label></div>";
            }
            if(isset($errl['textarea'])) { 
              $return .= error($errl['textarea'], 0, false);
            }
            $return .= "<textarea onkeyup=\"countText($(this), $('#textareaChars'));\" id=\"textarea\" class=\"textarea\" name=\"textarea\">".htmlspecialchars($_POST['textarea'])."</textarea><br>
            <span class=\"smallText\"><span id=\"textareaChars\">".number_format(strlen($_POST['textInput']))."</span>/".number_format($ans['maxChars'])."</span></div>";
          }
    }

The data format is:

   [answerTypes] => Array
    (
        [0] => 1
        [1] => 2
        [2] => 3
    )

[answers] => Array
    (
        [radioButton] => Array
            (
                [a] => Radio button 1 //radio button name => radio button label
                [b] => Radio button 2
                [c] => Radio button 3
            )

       [checkbox] => Array
           (
               [atLeast] => 0 //the minimum number of checkboxes that have to be checked
               [boxes] => Array
                   (
                       [a] => Checkbox 1 //checkbox name => checkbox label
                       [b] => Checkbox 2
                   )

           )

       [textInput] => Array
           (
               [label] => Please fill in:
               [maxChars] => 255
               [required] => 1
           )

   )