This is a prototype of a way to create surveys using Quarto shiny documents.

Note that it is very much not production ready. It doesn't even save the survey data to a database - for now it just writes to a local csv for purposes of testing and development. We are working on setting it up to save the data to a Google sheet, similar to how Google forms works.

Eventually, this will be compiled into a proper R package that will work in tandem with a Quarto extension. Keep an eye on the project as we hope to get to that stage sometime summer of 2024!

If you want to try running the demo, download / clone / fork the main branch, open the surveydown.Rproj file to open RStudio, then open the survey.qmd file. You should just be able to click the "Run Document" button at the top. You need to have the {shiny} and {shinyjs} packages installed. If you want to run it using just the command line, follow the Quarto instructions here.

It may also be worth reading my blog post on this idea to get a sense for what we're trying to accomplish. The post is now outdated in terms of the UI I had in mind back then, but the motivation for developing something like this remains.

TODO List:

• [x] show_if (conditionally display question)
• [x] skip_if (conditionally skip to page)
• [x] Set defaults for questions to not have any choices selected on launch.
• [x] Ability to embed markdown inside choice options (like mc buttons in formr)
• [x] Option for preview = TRUE (database is ignored)
• [x] Export timestamps on each page in the data
• [ ] Export timestamps on each question interaction (since this will increase the data size considerably, maybe add this as question_times = FALSE argument)
• [x] Option to start at a designated page, e.g. start_page = 'skipif'
• [ ] A show_all = TRUE argument to show all the pages and hidden questions when launched (e.g. to be able to print out the entire survey text). Could also be called print_mode = TRUE.
• [ ] Set up SCSS to be compatible with Quarto-supported bootstrap themes
• [ ] Include input checks for skip_if and show_if (question_id exists, and data frame names are correct)
• [ ] Add a progress bar option in sd_config(), maybe progress_bar = 'top' or progress_bar = 'bottom' as a default, and progress_bar = 'none' to turn it off.
• [ ] Required questions (required = TRUE): post a popup if a question is required before allowing next button. Default should be required = FALSE.
• [ ] Form validation: Make sure the user inputs the correct type depending on the question type. (see https://shiny.posit.co/r/reference/shiny/0.14/validate.html)
• [ ] Admin page w/password (see https://github.com/daattali/shinyforms)
• [ ] Basic version working with a googlesheets database
• [ ] User tracking via url parameters: https://shinysurveys.jdtrat.com/articles/surveying-shinysurveys.html#user-tracking
• [ ] Add a getSurveyData() function so the survey designer can obtain the current survey results from inside the app: https://shinysurveys.jdtrat.com/articles/get-survey-data.html
• Question types:
  • [x] Multiple choice (single choice)
  • [x] Multiple choice (multiple choices)
  • [x] Select
  • [x] Text
  • [x] Numeric
  • [x] Multiple choice (button...like formr mc_button)
  • [x] Text area
  • [x] Date
  • [ ] Matrix
  • [ ] Slider

Resources / examples:

• shinysurveys
• shinyforms
• Example of adding JS modules to shiny app (pop up message) - could be useful for adding any number of JS-based features, like pop ups for required questions, JS-based progress bar, etc.