Best practices for complex questionnaires

Yii 2.0 General Discussions
1

I’m about to develop an application that deals with complex questionnaires. The user starts out with one form and depending on the answers is then directed to a second form A or a second form B. The forms might also vary slightly in content, depending on previous answers. In total the user might be presented with 8-10 forms.

Are there best practices for dealing with this kind of challenge?

2

Save each step separately?

3

In my experience, first i create only one model called Wizardxxx. It contains all the field of each step and also a field called "step". I can also use other model rules validation as you can see in this example, the field email > unique




class Wizarduserregister extends Model

{

    public  $step;

    public  $email;

    public  $password;

    public  $name;

    public  $surname;

    public  $password;


    public function rules()

    {

        return [

            [['email'], 'string', 'max' => 255],

            [['email'], 'unique', 'targetClass' => '\app\models\User', 'targetAttribute' => 'email'],

            [['email'], 'filter', 'filter' => 'trim'],

            [['email'], 'email'],

            [['email'], 'required'],

            [['password'], 'string', 'min' => 3],

            [['password'], 'filter', 'filter' => 'trim'],

            [['password'], 'required'],

            [['step'], 'integer'],

            [['name','surname','note'], 'string'],




        ];

    }





}

After that the controller contain a main action where i check the Step field and do something. For example:




    public function actionRegisterwiz(){


        $wiz = new Wizarduserregister();

        $wiz->load(Yii::$app->request->post());


        if (! ($wiz->step > 0)) {$wiz->step = 1;} //entry step


        switch ($wiz->step) {

            case 1:

                // do step 1 actions

                // ...

                $wiz->step = 2;

                return $this->render('_wiz_step2', [

                    'model' => $wiz,

                ]);

                break;

            case 2:

                // do step 2 actions

                // ...

                $wiz->step = xxx;

                return $this->render('_wiz_stepxxx', [

                    'model' => $wiz,

                ]);

                break;        }




    }

I hope it can help you