Everyone wants to know what their constituency thinks. Some notes on XOOPS modules for surveys with an emphasis on the one I deployed. I will answer questions posted to this thread and upkeep my latest notes on Surveys on my website (this post is based on that).

There are a few options for Surveys. Yes, you can use polls, but those are very simple surveys and don't meet the needs of many surveys. The best open-source survey toolset I've found out there is LimeSurvey (formerly phpSurveyor). For XOOPS, I've found:

* Survey (aka bmsurvey) by Blue-Moon - v0.97 (Note: Bluemoon website dead)
* Survey (by Mithrandir) - v0.6 (old beta, unfinished/abandoned, based on Liaise, a Contact Us module)
* Formulize (Note: Visit developer page for latest edition)
* Xoops Polls/Survey Modules

Both these listed survey modules don't allow changes once the survey is active as they create individual tables for it. Neither allows for branching nor other advanced features that LimeSurvey has.

I'll note that Formulize is better but the learning curve is high compared to other modules as it's an application development framework in it's own right. Also, you could be looking for Contact Us modules which can also do the same thing for simple forms.

The best survey module overall for XOOPS seems to be Survey by Bluemoon (website defunct). It's based upon phpESP (php Easy Survey Package). These notes focus on the Survey module by Bluemoon as it's the most robust overall at this point.

Features
* 10 Question Types: Yes/No, Text Field, Text Area, Radio Buttons, Checkboxes, Dropdown, Rate (1-10, none, not defaulted), Date (no selector), Number (integer or real), File upload
* Informational Fields: allows HTML but not xCode or smilies
* "Other" Field - fill-in-the-blank responses (for Radio Buttons, Checkboxes); remembers (but doesn't display) for Dropdown, Ratings
* Multi-page (definable page breaks)
* File uploads
* Database storage
* Reports: simple, cross-tab
* Test mode
* Archive (de-activate)
* Purge/Delete data (not all though)
* Cloning (of surveys or questions)
* Themes (see admin help and /modules/bmsurvey/examples/classes.html)
* Data exporting (CSV)
* Backup - to Previous Pages/Answers (logins required)
* Save/Restore survey session (logins required)
* Response Limiting (if requiring login)

Features I Haven't Figured out yet
* Email Surveys - allows emailing un/registered users
* Bulk Upload of unregistered users (tab-delimited only) - couldn't figure out how/where

Oft-Requested but not available
* Branching (changing questions based on previous answers)

Notes
Installation is like any other module. Upgrades, per instructions, may require some special actions. I had no remaining existing installations of previous versions to try it on. YMMV.

Uploaded files are stored in the /uploads directory as username_xx_originalfilename.ext. Moving that required hard-coding.

Testing a survey (in admin) requires that it be put into test mode, which, similar to active mode, no longer allows changes to the survey. In my testing, I was able to make some changes. I'm unsure as to what isn't available. YMMV.

Deleting/Purging of surveys is available via a "hidden" function (according to the Admin FAQs) but is available in the Change Status area.

Bugs/Defects

T_STRING Errors
English language file main.php is missing a quote on line 137 that causes an error. I didn't check the other languages included (french and japanese).

Purge file admin/include/where/purge.inc requires fixing a couple of definitions (missing underscores): lines 33, 90.

Purging Data Doesn't
When purging a survey, not all data for the survey is actually removed. It does removes the survey definition info and its related question info (including choices for choice questions), but not the other response data nor access permissions.

Enhancement Requests

Group/User Display in Admin
In various locations (including selecting a survey to edit, or to purge), it shows the Group and Owner (user) by ID instead of name. It would be better to show username and group name.

No MultiSelect Field
There is no multiselect box. Check Boxes can fulfill this, but users may like it.

Date Selector
There is no date selector available. It can be integrated, but....

Link to Module Admin Home
There isn't a link back to the module's administrative home once the administrator gets into the Survey Management aspects.

Final Thoughts
Overall a good usable module. For my installations, I made copious changes to the language files and templates. Used on XOOPS 2.4.5 with PHP 5.2.

Very nice report!

Would you mind to post the updated code in our SourceForge SVN? So at least we have a code that is working on PHP 5

Very Nice. could you give us a download link( or update the SVN) so that we can test it.

Thanks in advance.

Deepak

Yeah, I will upload the changes to the SVN. Do you want the just the error fixes uploaded, or the template and (english) language changes that I made, too (I can check the other two languages for the errors I found)?

FWIW, the admin side is harder to work display-wise with since a lot of that isn't template/smarty driven and in the code.

BTW, do you want it here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xoops/files/XOOPS%20Module%20Repository/XOOPS2/bm_Survey/

or here:
https://xoops.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/xoops/XoopsModules/

Mark, I've created "bmsurvey" on the SourceForge SVN, so please update the code there.

Quote:
Yes, please all of them.

Thank you for all the improvements! It is greatly appreciated!

Sorry for the delay, but I've sent in the updates to the SVN.

Essentially:
2 bugfixes as described in this article
Updates to the English translation
Change of uploads directory to /uploads/bmsurvey instead of just the generic uploads.

I still want to work on the templates and get rid of the tables structure as well as other HTML - when time permits of course. And there is still functionality that, best I can tell, doesn't work or was never integrated from phpESP. But as a simple web-site-based survey module, it works well overall.

I still get frustrated with the XOOPSForms output and our inability to control it easily via CSS.

I guess the next question is how to version this and to make updates available to all (instead of just through the SVN, and knowing whether or not you actually know you have the latest or not).

Quote:
Once you're ready to make a release, normally we would:
- create a release in SVN
- make a Zip file
- update the SourceForge repository with that file
- update our module repository with the version number and link to SourceForge
- make an announcement