Announcing the Dokuwiki Survey Plugin

A fellow asked the other day, wether Dokuwiki supports surveys. He was thinking of a way to guide our firstlevel to a series of questions to either solve a user problem or get enough information for second level.

I told him, that I didn’t know it and looked in the [[http://www.dokuwiki.org/plugins|massive Dokuwiki plugin directory]]. But I didn’t find something he thought about.

So I did it myself.

Announcing the Dokuwiki Survey Plugin. You can find it over at [[http://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:survey|the Dokuwiki plugin page]] or at [[http://github.com/dploeger/dokuwiki-plugin-survey/tarball/master|Github]].

It’s in a pre-alpha-alpha-alpha state, but it already works. It takes a tree of questions and answers (I used Dokuwiki’s unordered list syntax for that) and transforms it into a Javascript-based questionnaire.

Let’s create an example, shall we?

===== Finding a social network for you (in Germany) =====

* How old are you?
* 12 to 18
* [[http://www.schuelervz.net|Schüler-VZ]] * 18 to 26
* [[http://www.studivz.net|Studi-VZ]] * 26 to 40
* Are you working in the field of IT?
* Yes
* [[http://plus.google.com|Google+]] * No
* [[http://www.facebook.com|Facebook]] * over forty
* Really?
* Yes
* Erm… Really?
* Yes
* [[http://www.facebook.com|Facebook]] (I guess)
* No
* Than press the „back“-Button
* No
* Than press the „back“-Button

===== Syntax used =====

This survey was made up using this syntax:



* How old are you?
* 12 to 18
* [[http://www.schuelervz.net|Schüler-VZ]] * 18 to 26
* [[http://www.studivz.net|Studi-VZ]] * 26 to 40
* Are you working in the field of IT?
* Yes
* [[http://plus.google.com|Google+]] * No
* [[http://www.facebook.com|Facebook]] * over forty
* Really?
* Yes
* Erm... Really?
* Yes
* [[http://www.facebook.com|Facebook]] (I guess)
* No
* Than press the "back"-Button
* No
* Than press the "back"-Button



===== Syntax explained =====

So we’re using the unordered list syntax of Dokuwiki to create a tree of questions and answers. At the topmost level is exactly one item and that’s the first, or „root“ question. After that are several answers to that question. Underneath an answer can be another question, then again answers and so on.

As you can see, we’re supporting external links (and internal links) using the standard link syntax of Dokuwiki.

===== Please help! =====

I honestly think, my code is rubbish. I got a hard time finding out the right algorithm for the conversion of the syntax to a machine readable hash. And the way I jump through the array using pointers here and there kinda feels wrong. So I’ll be glad, if somebody could give me a hand over at github to clean up the code a little.