Question

I’m struggling to make a flexible data structure (like a relational database) for a quiz in ActionScript 3.0.

I have a number of questions, each with 2 alternatives:

Questions

| id | alt1    | alt2    | correctAlt |
---------------------------------------
| 0  | Sweden  | Denmark | 1          |
| 1  | Norway  | Finland | 2          |
| 2  | Iceland | Ireland | 1          |

And a number of users with unique IDs:

Users

| id  | age  | sex  | profession | totalCorrect |
-------------------------------------------------
| A5  | 25   | 0    | "Lorem"    | 0            |              
| A6  | 45   | 1    | "Ipsum"    | 0            | 
| A7  | 32   | 1    | "Dolor"    | 0            |

And each user might answer a question:

Answers

| question_id | user_id | answer |
----------------------------------
| 0           | A5      | 1      |
| 1           | A6      | 2      |
| 2           | A7      | 1      |

---

How can I represent this in AS3?
And how can I, when I’ve collected all the data, answer questions such as:

a. How many users answered question 1?
b. How many % of the users answering question 1 were correct?
c. And how can I sum the number of correct answers for each user and update the totalCorrect column?

Answer 1

Whether you use a database or not, it’s still possible to represent this data with objects. You can create specific classes.

Here’s a basic example for a Question class.

public class Question
{
  private var _id:int;
  private var _alternatives:Array;
  private var _correctAnswer:int;

  public function Question()
  {
  }

  //----------- Group: Getters & Setters
  // follow the same principle as alternatives for id & correctAnswer

  public function set alternatives(value:Array):void
  { 
      _alternatives = value;
  }

  public function get alternatives():Array
  { 
     return  _alternatives;
  }

  // etc..... 
}

var question1:Question = new Question();
question1.alternatives = ["Sweden" , "Denmark"]
question.correctAnswer = 1;
question.id = 0;

It’s also possible to pass parameters to the constructor

public class Question
{
  private var _id:int;
  private var _alternatives:Array;
  private var _correctAnswer:int;

  public function Question(id:int , alt:Array, correct:int)
  {
      _id = id;
      _alternatives = alt;
      _correctAnswer = correct;

  }

  var question1:Question = new Question(0 , ["Sweden" , "Denmark"] , 1);

Do something similar for the Users , then create another class where you’ll manipulate the data.

Try and find some resources about Classes in general and Object Oriented Programming in particular.