Least Filled / Lowest Bucket / Auto Answer .. all needed ...

So I have read and re-read the posts around this and there seems to be a lot of broken out information but nothing that I can use to adapt or modify for my needs so throwing this out there to see if there has been a solution found by anyone else.

We have a need to classify participants based on a "lowest bucket" "least filled" approach.

They can be be sorted into 1 of 15 groups based on data from the sample (token attribute) or from answers to previous questions.

I know what I need to do but I am struggling on the exact implementation for this .....


Simply ... have a single choice question ...lets call it segment .. that has 15 answer options and is hidden

Take the data from the sample token and the answers given to determine which of the 15 answers is permissible for that participant.

Check the counts from the database that returns the allowed answers

Sort into lowest numerical answer and populate that answer in the hidden segment question and move on with the rest of the survey.

I know that this can be accomplished by ...

1) An Ajax call in a question that calls a PHP file
2) A PHP file populated by the aforementioned Ajax Call that returns the counts from the database
3) Some JQuery that sorts the data returned from the PHP file (probably in an Array) and then identifies the lowest filled option
4) An equation type question that takes the code of the lowest group and sets that answer in the hidden question

What I need help on is the code that does this ... Not sure if this is a common request but it is a feature of the more established survey packages out there and should be fairly doable based on scripts I have seen in here in relation to Ajax / PHP calls

Thanks so much for you help in advance
Dave

Obligatory Version 2.6.4 LTS with a view to upgrading when we have downtime

davebostockgmail wrote: …
Obligatory Version 2.6.4 LTS with a view to upgrading when we have downtime

There is no 2.6.4lts , 2.6.7 only (and it's not a long time support currently).

Else : for such system : i surely make a plugin BUT here there are a real work to do, it's not just (for me) a forum help support related …

See www.limesurvey.com/customization or support.sondages.pro/

That's strange as this is what I see on the admin screen.


I understand what you are saying about the level of work involved but for now I will try to solve with scripts from other posts on here.

Any pointers on relevant posts would help

DenisChenu wrote: There is no 2.6.4lts , 2.6.7 only (and it's not a long time support currently).

To state that there is no 2.6.4-lts is confusing people.


Currently LimeSurvey is only supporting LS 3.X.
When LS 4 is released, the LS 3.X will be LTS.

Denis is offering a branch of LS 2.6.7 LTS.
github.com/SondagesPro/LimeSurvey-SondagesPro

Any investment in modifications of LS should be based on LS 3.X now.
Investing in modifications of 2.6.X LTS should be based on the code Denis is offering.

Personally I wouldn't want to use such workarounds. I would like to see a solid ground inside the LimeSurvey core. Access to database via ExpressionScript.

jelo wrote:

DenisChenu wrote: There is no 2.6.4lts , 2.6.7 only (and it's not a long time support currently).

To state that there is no 2.6.4-lts is confusing people. …

Not in my opinion .

There are no 2.6.4lts anymore : it don't exist. It's a 2.6.4 only

If LTS is part of the version naming (as clearly seen in the screenshot), it's just existing.
And contradicting that with your statement is adding confusion. It can be read as if such a version (2.6.4-lts) was never released.

Just because there is no support more for the version doesn't mean it is not "2.6.4 LTS" anymore, because this is what it states on the installation.

I agree with Jelo: I would not invest in complicated workarounds in old versions, especially as you are planning to update. There is no "smallest bucket" solution out of the box, so as you already noticed this means custom coding and from what I can see there will be probably quite a bit of custom work involved.

Why not run a new version in parallel to test and for just this approach. Later you can move everything else. Of course this depends on the size of your installation (number of users that would need to move, number of surveys that would need to move to the new system).

But given that you would skip a major version anyway when moving from 2.6.4 to 3.x I would go this route anyway.

Obligatory Version 2.6.4 LTS with a view to upgrading when we have downtime

So never?!
My experience shows that there is never really enough "downtime" to upgrade. You just need to go for it, during a time that is not as bad as others, otherwise it will never happen.

I hear what you are saying re: no downtime, however I do have a planned maintenance window set up ... so Christmas it is ...

In terms of development of this then I will probably just hard code this now for this one survey using a simple SQL call to determine the lowest number and auto punch that as the code ... here is where I am at so far and it seems to be working to do what I need....


SELECT {SIDXGIDXQID}, count(*) as totals
FROM surveys.survey_{SID)
where {SIDXGIDXQID} is not null and {SIDXGIDXQID} in (1,3,4) // Range of allowable values that this participant qualifies for this is drawn from the Expression Manager
group by {SIDXGIDXQID}
order by totals asc
LIMIT 1;

So this pulls the answers from the data base counts and sorts them in desc order (so the lowest is at the top) and then returns the code that is the lowest...

Now to wrap this in PHP wrapper .. call it with an Ajax call and use an expression to set the pre / post actions ... all in all simple way to get counts.

just one more thing to do which is to add in 15 dummy completes each with a valid code in the question response that can be deleted later so that the Null select clause returns all the valid values at least at the start of the survey.

OK, Ok, you're right ... sorry, please forgive me ...

@davebostockgmail : you can update to mine if you don't want to redo all theme and/or have plugin and/or use max (for example) in Expression Manager

@davebostockgmail : you can update to mine if you don't want to redo all theme and/or have plugin and/or use max (for example) in Expression Manager

I think you are talking about your fork, right? I think it wasn't too clear.

I have spent the time working with the posts from here (old time ones as I don't have the new shiny server) and a little trial and error .... although looking at this the hardest thing was the SQL aspect of things so it may work with the new versions with some tweaks... and I thought I would share it here with anyone that is interested.

What this does
It takes answers from a participant and then allocates them to segments that they qualify for on a "least filled" basis so if I am qualified to be in segments 3, 5 and 7 then this approach will look at the counts from the database and assign me to the segment that has the lowest number of respondents in there.

Step 1: Create a multiple choice question which has all the segments in there and populate it however you want to ... mine is a mix of data from sample along with answers they have given (an equation question populates this)

Step 2: Use a second equation question to concatenate the answers from the first, this allows me only to return the relevant codes from the database here is the equation script I used ...

{join ( if (Q1Set_1=="Y","1,",""),if (Q1Set_2=="Y","2,",""),if (Q1Set_3=="Y","3,",""),if (Q1Set_4=="Y","4,",""),if (Q1Set_5=="Y","5,",""),if (Q1Set_6=="Y","6,",""),if (Q1Set_7=="Y","7,",""),if (Q1Set_8=="Y","8,",""),if (Q1Set_9=="Y","9,",""),if (Q1Set_10=="Y","10,",""),if (Q1Set_11=="Y","11,",""),if (Q1Set_12=="Y","12,",""),if (Q1Set_13=="Y","13,",""),if (Q1Set_14=="Y","14,",""),if (Q1Set_15=="Y","15,",""))}

I had 15 possible segments ... note this adds in a final comma and some whitespace that is removed in the next step

Step 3 in a short text question I added the following script ... I used a short text question as this gave the ability to process the Ajax and also a place to hold the data that was returned from the call ... I am sure there is more elegant way of doing this .... but this works for me

Here is the script I added

<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">
$(document).ready(function() {

var apiFilePath = 'https://yoursurvey/balance.php';
var sid = 134625;
var gid = 1393;
var qid = 31145;
var ans= "{GroupList.shown}";
var answers = ans.substr(0,ans.length - 5); //IMPORTANT TO STRIP THE LAST COMMA AND WHITESPACE


$.ajax({
url: apiFilePath, /
async: true,
cache : false,
data: {
sid: sid,
gid: gid,
qid: qid,
answers: answers

},
success: function(results){
$('#answer134625X1393X31146').val(results);
},
error: function(){
alert('Could not connect!');
}
});
$('#answer134625X1393X31146').hide();
});
</script>

So this calls an external PHP file that accesses the data base and then returns the code with the least counts associated to it .. here is the PHP file (username and password changed) .. The way the SQL code is structured means that it returns all answers to the question even those with 0 entries so far .. there is no need in this method to add in dummy data as I was thinking about doing in an earlier post.

<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set('display_errors', 1);

$servername = 'localhost';
$dbname = 'surveys';
$username = 'xxxx';
$password='xxxx' ;


$iSurveyID = $_GET["sid"];
$iGroupID = $_GET["gid"];
$iQuestID = $_GET["qid"];
$iAnswers = $_GET["answers"];;



// Create connection
$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);
// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}

$sql = "SELECT answers.code, COUNT(survey_".$iSurveyID.".`".$iSurveyID."X".$iGroupID."X".$iQuestID."`) AS Total, answers.answer FROM survey_".$iSurveyID." RIGHT OUTER JOIN answers ON survey_".$iSurveyID.".`".$iSurveyID."X".$iGroupID."X".$iQuestID."` = answers.code WHERE answers.qid = ".$iQuestID." and answers.code IN ( ".$iAnswers." ) GROUP BY answers.code ORDER BY Total Limit 1;";

$result = $conn->query($sql);


if ($result->num_rows > 0) {
// output data of each row
while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
echo $row["code"];
}
} else {
echo "0 results";
}

$conn->close();


?>

Then once this is back in the survey ... I have a final single choice question that is set by an equation question with the answer returned from the script and the logic can be used as normal ... also this allows me to set quotas against this to ensure that we hit targets.

{Q1=Q1Outcome.shown}

.......

So there it is ... not the best code I am sure and again there are probably steps that I have taken that I didn't need to, but it works so there is that and I have seen some questions on here asking for something similar so I thought I would share ....

All this is run on version 2.6.4 (lts or not lts dependent on your point of view)