DigitalKitty has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi all.

I'm writing a small opinion poll using perl/cgi and it appears I need a little assistance. See below for code: 

#!c:\perl\bin\perl.exe -wT

use strict;
use CGI qw(:standard);

my $line;
my %survey;

print header;

open( FH, ">>psy.txt") or die "Error : $!\n";

foreach my $key( param() ) {
  print FH param($key), "\n";
}

close FH;

open( FH, "<psy.txt" ) or die "Error : $!\n";

while( $line = <FH> ) {
  $survey{$line}++;
}

foreach my $key ( keys %survey ) {

  print table(Tr(td( { -width => "$survey{$key}",
                 -height => "30", -bgcolor => "red" } ) ) ), br;
}

close FH;

[download]


The HTML form consists of 15 questions. Each question can be answered via one of four radio buttons. In an attempt to simplify the design aspects, I followed davido's advice and used unique 'id' numbers (starting with 1 and ending with 60). Question 1 is 1..4, question 2 is 5..8, etc. These are written to a small text file then placed into a hash in order to generate a small histogram (via CGI.pm). I'd like to display the output in the following manner:



Note:This is *not* a homework assignment. It is a favor for a psychology professor.

Thanks,
-Katie.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Writing an opinion poll in perl.
by cchampion (Curate) on Sep 20, 2003 at 10:49 UTC

    There is WWW-Poll, but it is quite buggy. I tried it, and I had to modify a few things just to be able to run the tests.

    It may be a good start if you don't want to write your own system from scratch.

    In Poll.pm, change line 281 from  undef (@maxvotes,@votes); to undef (@maxvotes); undef(@votes);

    In the demo script you have to change the starting path to "data" and it should work. After that, you're on your own.

    Good luck.

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
Re: Writing an opinion poll in perl.
by benn (Vicar) on Sep 20, 2003 at 10:24 UTC
    I'm sure there must be some modules lying around on CPAN to do exactly this, but if you want to roll your own...
    • work out the minimum and maximum values of the graph - foreach (keys %survey) {$max = $_ if $survey{$_} > $survey{$max}; repeat and rinse for $min} or something.
    • Do some maths to work out your scale factor,depending on how big you want your graph
    • decide how you want to do your graphics - the two most common ways are stretching a single-pixel (<img width=$value height=$size_of_a_column src='pixel.gif' >) or just printing <td>'s with coloured backgrounds - either a single td with a styled size (using padding-right or similar) or a bunch of 'unit' cells that get filled in or not as the case may be.
    • From then on it's all just print loops... :)
    HTH, Ben.
[reply]
[d/l]
Re: Writing an opinion poll in perl.
by Jaap (Curate) on Sep 20, 2003 at 09:38 UTC
    And what is your question?
[reply]
      Hi.

      I need to know how to display the data in the following format for each question on the form as well as how many 'votes' each of the four choices received:


      I think pasta is good
      Strongly agree********
      Agree**
      Disagree*************
      Strongly disagree****

      The asterisks would represent the red bar which is a graphical measure of each hash value. I could post the html form if need be.

      Thanks,
      -Katie
[reply]
        PerlMonks messes up the first table, so it's in code tags. I also had HTML::BarGraph laying around, but I never use it, so no example ;) 
        use HTML::BarChart;
use CGI qw[ *table Tr td br Th ];
my $survey = 'I think pasta is good';
my %survey = (
    'Strongly agree'    => '********',
    'Agree'             => '**',
    'Disagree'          => '*************',
    'Strongly disagree' => '****'
);
my $flippy  = 0;
my $Chart = HTML::BarChart->new( $survey, 100, 100 );
foreach my $key ( keys %survey ) {
    $Chart->bar(
        $key,
        length $survey{$key},
        $flippy
        ? $flippy++ && "red"
        : $flippy-- && "black"
    );
}
$Chart->draw;


print start_table({-border=>1}),Th({-colspan=>2}, $survey );
foreach my $key ( keys %survey ) {
  print Tr(
          td({ -height => "30", -bgcolor => "red" },$key),
          td($survey{$key} )
          );
}
print end_table;


__END__
    <table bgcolor="#000000" width="100" height="100" border="0" cellp
+adding="0" cellspacing="1"><tr>
        <td colspan="5">
    <table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" bgcolor="#FFFFFF
+" width="100%">
    <tr><td valign="top" align="center"><font size="2" face="Arial">
I think pasta is good
    </td></tr></table>
</td></tr><tr><td colspan="5" align="center"><table bgcolor="#FFFFFF" 
+border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr>

    <td valign="bottom" align="center" width="100">
        <table height="30.7692307692308" width="25" bgcolor="0" cellpa
+dding="1" cellspacing="1">
        <tr><td></tr></td></table>
    </td>

    <td valign="bottom" align="center" width="100">
        <table height="100" width="25" bgcolor="red" cellpadding="1" c
+ellspacing="1">
        <tr><td></tr></td></table>
    </td>

    <td valign="bottom" align="center" width="100">
        <table height="15.3846153846154" width="25" bgcolor="0" cellpa
+dding="1" cellspacing="1">
        <tr><td></tr></td></table>
    </td>

    <td valign="bottom" align="center" width="100">
        <table height="61.5384615384615" width="25" bgcolor="red" cell
+padding="1" cellspacing="1">
        <tr><td></tr></td></table>
    </td>
</tr></table></td></tr><tr><td><table width="100%" border="0" cellpadd
+ing="0" cellspacing="1" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><tr>
    <td align="center"><font size="1" face="Arial">Strongly disagree</
+font></td></tr></table></td>    
<td><table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="1" bgc
+olor="#FFFFFF"><tr>
    <td align="center"><font size="1" face="Arial">Disagree</font></td
+></tr></table></td>    
<td><table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="1" bgc
+olor="#FFFFFF"><tr>
    <td align="center"><font size="1" face="Arial">Agree</font></td></
+tr></table></td>    
<td><table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="1" bgc
+olor="#FFFFFF"><tr>
    <td align="center"><font size="1" face="Arial">Strongly agree</fon
+t></td></tr></table></td>    
</tr></table>

        [download]
        I think pasta is good
        Strongly disagree ****
        Disagree *************
        Agree **
        Strongly agree ********

        MJD says "you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo!"
        I run a Win32 PPM repository for perl 5.6.x and 5.8.x -- I take requests (README).
        ** The third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.

[reply]
[d/l]
        <table border="1">
   <tr>
       <td width="40%" align="right">QUESTION_TEXT</td>
       <td width="60%">
           <table width="20" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0
+">
               <tr bgcolor="red"><td align="center"><strong>20</strong
+></td></tr>
           </table>
       </td>    
   </tr>
   <tr>
       <td width="40%" align="right">QUESTION_TEXT</td>
       <td width="60%">
           <table width="30" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0
+">
               <tr bgcolor="red"><td align="center"><strong>30</strong
+></td></tr>
           </table>
       </td>    
   </tr>
   <tr>
       <td width="40%" align="right">QUESTION_TEXT</td>
       <td width="60%">
           <table width="40" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0
+">
               <tr bgcolor="red"><td align="center"><strong>40</strong
+></td></tr>
           </table>
       </td>    
   </tr>
   <tr>
       <td width="40%" align="right">QUESTION_TEXT</td>
       <td width="60%">
           <table width="50" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0
+">
               <tr bgcolor="red"><td align="center"><strong>50</strong
+></td></tr>
           </table>
       </td>    
   </tr>
</table>

        [download]
        Try this HTML in your browser. Are you looking for something like that?

        --dda

[reply]
[d/l]
        HOW TO CODE AN OPINION POLL WITH MYSQL AS BACKEND i am using Message Master as a platform for Cellphones. I code on Perl and the database is MYSQL. the arguments to be taken are. YES;No;Time;CellNumber;counter
[reply]

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