[Nms-cgi-devel] Re: [Nms-cgi-support] suggestion for feature to facilitate statistical analyses of form data received

[Jonathan S. <jn...@ge...>]

On Mon, 2006-03-20 at 14:47, Jay Jones-Doyle wrote:
> Hey all.
>  
> I recently configured a form using TFMail to return to me the results
> from an online survey for my bachelors thesis.  One requiredment of
> such a survey is that, for the purposes of statistical analyses, ALL
> fields must have a value: meaning that if a user did not fill in /
> answer a certain question, the program still requires there to be a
> value (picture a spreadsheet-like program).
>  
> anyways, i'm here because certain questions were conditional, meaning
> " 2) If yes, blahblah, if no skip to question 5."
>  
> The problem was that questions 3 & 4 needed a value of '0' just to
> show that the user provided no response.  This cannot be done
> clientside because of security issues relating to "filling out the
> form for the user".
>  
> i was to that serverside I would need something like (for a radio
> button):
>  
> my $toolsYesNo = $query->param('name taken from radio button');
> if $toolsYesNo = ""; { 
> $toolsYesNo = 0;
> }
>  
> I thought you might want to include such options in the script, but
> broaden in to "What would you like submitted if a button / text area
> is not filled in?
>  
> i see it as something like:
>  
> user config area:
> -----------------------
> button / text area name: value / message
>  
> script:
> --------
>  
> my $toolsYesNo = $query->param('name taken from radio button');
> if $toolsYesNo = ""; { 
> $toolsYesNo = 0;
> }
>  
> any thoughts?

I think what you meant to suggest was 'the ability to provide a default
value for input fields', your actual suggestion is to closely tied to
your own requirements and is not generally useful.

I would see having something like:

default_<fieldname>: <value>

in the configuration and using the values from there if none is supplied
in the form values.

We can add something like this to the TODO list, but it needs some keen
develo0per to pick it up.

/J\
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