Re: Mod_Survey 3.2.1-pre1

For some reason, the latest version of pine messes up the indentation I 
try to do for survey examples. Ah well, I guess you understand what I mean 
anyway.

   // Joel

On Mon, 4 Oct 2004, Joel Palmius wrote:

> There's a new development snapshot online now, the first pre-release of what 
> is to become 3.2.1. You will probably not want to use this on a production 
> server right now, but it might give you an idea about the new toys that will 
> appear in the stable release.
>
> The folllowing is a list of higlights, some of them are explained more in 
> detail further down:
>
> * Array-like structures in IMPORT, session and perl snippet API
> * New SUBMIT tag (only half-finished)
> * Bugfix for the 999 problem, which is hopefully now resolved
> * Cleanups in DBI code (now modularized so common operations share API)
> * Cleanups/extensions for third-part modules, mainly Cough
> * Backwards and forwards connectors
>
> ARRAY-LIKE STRUCTURES: This enables you to either import a complete set of 
> data from a database, or generate it on-the-fly. It can then be used as the 
> set of (DB)LISTELEMENTs or (DB)CHOICEELEMENTs in a LIST/CHOICE block. 
> Consider the following:
>
> <SURVEY TITLE="dbtest">
> <IMPORT DBIDSN="DBI:Pg:dbname=joepal"
> DBITABLE="respondent"
> DBIUSER="joepal">
> <ARRAY NAME="name" FIELD="name" />
> <ARRAY NAME="persid" FIELD="persid" />
> </IMPORT>
>
> <LIST NAME="age" CAPTION="When were you born?">
>  <DBLISTELEMENT CAPTIONARRAY="name" VALUEARRAY="persid" />
>  </LIST>
> </SURVEY>
>
> .. which imports all cells in the columns "name" and "persid" from a DBI 
> database and then uses them for captions and values in a LIST block. The 
> arrays can also be dynamically created using the perl snippet API, which can 
> come in handy if you, for example, want a long list of years.
>
> BugAnt did most of the above code.
>
> SUBMIT TAG: This will eventually make it possible to write the after-submit 
> html message inside the survey file. It will work like a CUSTOM. Currently it 
> only parses for submit-time perl snippets.
>
> BACKWARDS AND FORWARDS CONNECTORS: These are perl snippet enhancements for 
> making it possible to connect Mod_Survey in a chain with other tools. To 
> fetch a variable from the GET string, it is now possible to do:
>
> {&
> my($value) = $argument->ArgByName("avalue");
> $session->setValue("avalue",$value);
> &}
>
> <TEXT NAME="test" CAPTION="Fetched from GET" DEFAULT="{£avalue£}" />
>
> .. which enables backwards connector (ie something before mod_survey sending 
> data to mod_survey). Calling the survey file with an argument such as 
> "test.survey?action=display&avalue=hello" would set "hello" as the default 
> value in the text box.
>
> On the other end, it is now possible to set cookie values in the submit-time 
> perl snippet api:
>
> <SUBMIT>
> <|
> my($value) = $session->getValue("SUBMITTED_test");
> $self->setCookie("avalue",$value);
> |> 
> </SUBMIT>
>
> .. which would fetch the submitted variable "test" and put it into a cookie 
> named "avalue" (path is hardcoded to /, and expiry to +60m). The cookie is 
> possible to read by any server-side script running with the same base URL.
>
> I haven't announced the release on the homepage or on freshmeat yet, but 
> expect to do so this afternoon. There is a link to the snapshot from the 
> download page though, and the code is available through CVS.
>
> The nearest work (for my part) will probably be focused on cleaning up the 
> stylesheet set-up in regards to DIV tags and similar.
>
>  // Joel
>