Rapidfire

One stop solution for all survey related requirements! Its tad easy!

This gem supports:

• rails: 4.2, 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 6.0, 6.1 and 7.0
• ruby: 2.4, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, 3.0, 3.1 and 3.2

NOTE: Some combinations won't be supported. Please check CI for the ignored ones.

A simple implementaiton of this gem can be found at https://rapidfire.fly.dev. And the source code of application is https://github.com/code-mancers/rapidfire-app.

Installation

Add this line to application's Gemfile:

gem 'rapidfire'

And then execute:

$ bundle install
$ bundle exec rake rapidfire:install:migrations
$ bundle exec rake db:migrate

Rapidfire views can also be customized. This command copies the views into app/views directory:

$ bundle exec rails generate rapidfire:views

Rapidfire locales (i18n) files can also be customized. The command is:

$ bundle exec rails generate rapidfire:locales

Usage

Add this line to config/routes.rb file, thats good enough

mount Rapidfire::Engine => "/rapidfire"

Please point the browser to http://localhost:3000/rapidfire

All rapidfire controllers inherit from your ApplicationController. So define 2 methods current_user and can_administer? on your ApplicationController

1. current_user : the user who is answering the survey. can be nil
2. can_administer? : a method which determines whether current user can create/update survey questions.

Typical implementation would be:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  def current_user
    @current_user ||= User.find(session[:user_id])
  end

  def can_administer?
    current_user.try(:admin?)
  end
end

It also will assume that whatever current_user returns above will respond to a method called survey_name.

That method should return the name that is associated with the results. For example:

class User
  def survey_name
    "#{last_name}, #{first_name}"
  end
end

If the application is using authentication gems like Devise, Devise will automatically provide current_user helper for free. There is no need to define it

Override

Override path to redirect after answer the survey

# my_app/app/decorators/controllers/rapidfire/attempts_controller_decorator.rb
Rapidfire::AttemptsController.class_eval do
  def after_answer_path_for
    main_app.root_path
  end
end

Routes Information

Once this gem is mounted on, say at 'rapidfire', it generates several routes They can be listed by running bundle exec rake routes.

1. The root_path i.e localhost:3000/rapidfire always points to list of surveys {they are called question groups}. Admin can manage surveys, and any user {who cannot administer} can see list of surveys.

2. Optionally, each survey can by answered by visiting this path:

   localhost:3000/rapidfire/surveys/<survey-id>/attempts/new
   

   This url can be distributed so that survey takers can attempt the survey

3. If you have an established application that uses route helpers and/or the url_for([@model1, @model2]) style, you can include your route helpers in RapidFire by adding config/initializers/rapidfire.rb with the following content:

   Rails.application.config.after_initialize do
     Rails.application.reload_routes!
   
     Rapidfire::ApplicationController.class_eval do
       main_app_methods = Rails.application.routes.url_helpers.methods
       main_app_route_methods = main_app_methods.select{|m| m =~ /_url$/ || m =~ /_path$/ }
       main_app_route_methods.each do |m|
         define_method m do |*args|
           main_app.public_send(m, *args)
         end
         helper_method m
       end
     end
   end

Survey Results

There is an API for fetching the results. This is not efficient, but is provided for the sake of quickly aggregating survey results

GET /rapidfire/surveys/<survey-id>/results

This new api supports two formats: html and json. The json format can be used with any javascript based chart solutions like Chart.js. An example can be seen here.

Diving into details of json format, all the questions can be categorized into one of the two categories:

1. aggregatable: questions like checkboxes, selects, radio buttons fall into this category.
2. non-aggregatable: questions like long answers, short answers, date, numeric etc.

All the aggregatable answers will be returned in the form of hash, and the non-aggregatable answers will be returned in the form of an array. A typical json output will be like this:

[
  {
    "question_type": "Rapidfire::Questions::Radio",
    "question_text": "Who is author of Waiting for godot?",
    "results": {
      "Sublime": 1,
      "Emacs": 1,
      "Vim": 1
    }
  },
  {
    "question_type": "Rapidfire::Questions::Checkbox",
    "question_text": "Best rock band?",
    "results": {
      "Led Zeppelin": 2
    }
  },
  {
    "question_type": "Rapidfire::Questions::Date",
    "question_text": "When is your birthday?",
    "results": ["04-02-1983", "01/01/1970"]
  },
  {
    "question_type": "Rapidfire::Questions::Long",
    "question_text": "If Apple made a android phone what it will be called?",
    "results": ["Idude", "apdroid"]
  },
  {
    "question_type": "Rapidfire::Questions::Numeric",
    "question_text": "Answer of life, universe and everything?",
    "results": ["42", "0"]
  },
  {
    "question_type": "Rapidfire::Questions::Select",
    "question_text": "Places you want to visit after death",
    "results": {
      "Iran": 2
    }
  }
]

How it works

This gem gives on the fly access to create questions under a survey. Once the survey is created, questions can be added to the survey. Every survey will have a url which can be can passed around to others to take the survey.

The typical flow about how to use this gem is:

1. Create a survey by giving it a name.

2. Once the survey is created, start adding questions to the survey

3. Create a question by clicking on add new, and there will be several options Each question will have a type

   • Checkbox Create a question which contains multiple checkboxes with the options that you provide in answer options field. Note that each option should be on a separate line.
   • Date It takes date as an answer
   • Long It needs a description as answer. Renders a textarea.
   • Numeric It takes a number as an answer
   • Radio It renders set of radio buttons by taking answer options.
   • Select It renders a dropdown by taking answer options.
   • Short It takes a string as an answer. Short answer.
   • File It renders a file input which can take only 1 file.
   • MultiFile It renders a file input which can take multile files.

4. Once the type is filled, optionally other details can be filled:

   • Question text What is the question?
   • Answer options Give options separated by newline for questions of type checkbox, radio buttons or select.
   • Answer presence Should you mandate answering this question?
   • min and max length Checks whether answer if in between min and max length. Ignores if blank.
   • greater than and less than Applicable for numeric question where answer is validated with these values.

5. Once the questions are populated, a url will be created which can be shared

6. Note that answers fail to persist if the criteria provided while creating the questions fail.

Notes on upgrading

Adding multitenancy support

$ rake rapidfire:upgrade:migrations:multitenancy

Upgrading from 2.1.0 to 3.0.0

Some table names have changed:

• rapidfire_question_groups to rapidfire_surveys, and
• rapidfire_answer_groups to rapidfire_attempts.

Run this rake task to do this change automatically

$ rake rapidfire:upgrade:migrations:from210to300

Upgrading from 1.2.0 to 2.0.0

The default delimiter which is used to store options for questions like select input, multiple answers for checkbox question is comma (,). This resulted in problems where gem is unable to parse options properly if answers also contain commas. For more information see issue-19.

Starting from version 2.0.0 default delimiter is changed to \r\n, but a configuration is provided to change the delimiter. Please run this rake task to make existing questions or stored answers to use new delimiter.

NOTE: Please take database backup before running this rake task.

bundle exec rake rapidfire:change_delimiter_from_comma_to_srsn
bundle exec rake rapidfire:change_delimiter_from_comma_to_srsn

If this change is not feasible rightaway, and the application needs to use comma as delimiter, then please use this initializer, but be warned that in future delimiter will be hardcoded to \r\n:

# /<path-to-app>/config/initializers/rapidfire.rb

Rapidfire.config do |config|
  config.answers_delimiter = ','
end

TODO

1. Add ability to sort questions, so that order is preserved.

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit all the changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request