Yast - Yet another survey tool

Evaluation, playground project to try implementing a one page application able survey. The reference frontend is implemented using BackboneJS, the trivial reference backend is implemented using a NodeJS server utilizing ExpressJs 4.

Idea

• REST API for feedback and surveys
• Survey template as JSON datastructure
• Survey structure and text separated for easy internationalisation
• Simple Javascript library for frontends

"Features"

• Multiple input element types (see below)
• Texts and survey structure separated
• Steps can depend on other answers values
• Humble responsiveness
• Dumb ExpressJs backend to serve and receive the survey

Technology

BackboneJs

• The template structure is fed into / as the view's config
• The Step view, extended from a Group maps the template type to the view class
• The survey values are stored into a model; the template's id will be the model's key.
• The pagination is controlled using a model: navModel

Template

The template is based on JSON and consisting of a tree structure modeling the GUI elements and a list of translations.

A GUI element at least has this structure:

{type: "<TYPE>", content: <CONTENT>}

• TYPE can be step, group, text, multiplechoice, range or freetext
• CONTENT depends on the type and is an object for every type except text, which just contains the I18N reference
• group and step are similar, they only contain other elements
• groups may contain other groups
• All elements may have an id attribute specifying the key to store the value to

For an example template see /data/form.json.example and the corresponding texts.json.example.

Types

Step

• content (Array) Contains other GUI template objects
• depends (String) Simple comparsion expression to match the value of another ID to a hardcoded value. This can be used to make a step dependent on another input element's choice/value. Currently only one comparsion level (<IDENTIFYER> <COMPARATOR> <VALUE>) is possible.

Group

• content (Array) contains other GUI template objects

Text

• content (String) I18N reference

Multiplechoice

• id (ID)
• exclusive (boolean) - If true only one option can be active at the time
• layout (String) - Control the layout of the buttons. Valid: row, column
• choices (Array) - Objects containing ... -- id (ID) -- text (String) I18N reference and optionally -- free-text (boolean)

Range

• id (ID)
• steps (int) Number of options
• lower (String) I18N reference
• upper (String) I18N reference

Freetext

• id (ID)

Try out

Prepare the template

Copy the form and text JSON example files into a subdirectory with a numeric foldername which represents the ID.

$ mkdir /data/47
$ cp /data/form.json.example /data/47/form.json.example
$ cp /data/texts.json.example /data/47/texts.json.example

Start the server

$ node server/runme.js

Use it

Surf to on of the example pages, e.g.: http://localhost:7072/index.html#in-overlay,47

(The format of the hash part is #{in-overlay|standalone},<ID>.)

Send some surveys and take a look into the folder /received/47. You'll find some files with a Unix timestamp as name containing the result data in JSON format.

See the results

The accumulated results can be examined under http://localhost:7072/results/47 too.

Status

In early development. Unstable. Probably never done. Not tested. But working.

License

This code is MIT licensed for you.