Hello,


I am a freelance web developer, and also the son of a teacher who has an online form.

The form is working quite well,
People are submitting it and he can export in many formats.

However, as this form is a subscription to an official programm,
He has to check who is well subscribed and who is not (yet).

So he is doing several exports, which is a bit leak of time...

I was wondering :

• if there is a (public) way to access an online listing of form submissions ; For instance, a link that he can share to the form submitters to make they check their submissions themselves before he control it at the end ?!
• Or in another way, if it is possible to query the database, to be able to display the data through an online listing page ?

As I am totally new in LimeSurvey, I was just wondering what could be done with this tool ?

Thanks in advance,

Florent Schildknecht

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Bonjour,


Je suis développeur web auto-entrepreneur et également fils d'un enseignant qui a un formulaire en ligne LimeSurvey.

Le formulaire marche bien,
Les gens envoient des réponses qu'il peut exporter en plusieurs formats.

Cependant, comme ce formulaire est une inscription à un programme officiel,
Il doit vérifier qui s'est bien inscrit, et qui ne s'est pas (encore) inscrit.

Il fait donc cela assez fréquemment, ce qui n'est pas très pratique pour lui.

Je me demandais, dans l'optique de pouvoir l'aider si c'est possible :

• S'il y a un moyen (public) d'accéder à un listing en ligne automatique des réponses ; Par exemple un lien qu'il peut partager aux gens qui veulent/doivent s'inscrire pour qu'ils puissent vérifier eux-même dans un premier temps si tout va bien ?!
• Ou par ailleurs, s'il est possible d'envoyer des requêtes à la base de données, pour pouvoir afficher les réponses sous forme de listing en ligne ?

Comme je suis tout nouveau sur LimeSurvey, je voulais savoir si ce genre d'opération est possible et prévu par cet outil ?

Par avance, merci,

Florent Schildknecht

Limesurvey is not the best tool, when it comes forms and subscription etc.

You could try to use tokens, so that user can reenter the form and change/change the data.
If your dad sends out invitations via email he can preregister them with a token. Or you try to use public registration for these users.

Take a look at the manual to get used to the concept:
www.limesurvey.org/manual/Tokens

Kannst auch im deutschen Forum schreiben. Wobei die Dokumentation in Englisch am umfangreichsten ist.

Hey Jelo, thanks for your answer,

But this is not what I am trying to do, I would like a listing with some of the submitted forms values.
Basically, the fields "name" and "firstname" of the people that have already submitted the form.

Like an online array, or any way to query the database to select these fields ?!

And I cannot choose another tool, because french teachers have to use it, as it seems to be the national selected tool.

I still don't get what you really want to do.

But you can always export the responses to excel and the responses are also listed in the backend (Statistics).

FloSchield wrote: But this is not what I am trying to do

My answer was aimed to bring a solution to this statement:

if there is a (public) way to access an online listing of form submissions ; For instance, a link that he can share to the form submitters to make they check their submissions themselves before he control it at the end ?!

If a someone fills out the survey/form and submit it they record is saved.
Why isn't it possible that your dad gets an useraccount for limesurvey to review the results there.
That way he could review results:
www.limesurvey.org/manual/Browsing_survey_results

A public link is no way to go. Even if Limesurvey is used in an intranet public access to submitted records cannot be lawful in terms of data protection.

It seems to be the case that the submitter often isn't correctly filling out the survey/form on the first attempt.
So a review should be made possible for the submitter. To review and change the submitted survey/form token are the way to go.

It is unclear, if some data of the user (emailaddress/name is already known before the survey/form is filled out for the first time.

If a list is available, tokens can be generated.
If not, www.limesurvey.org/manual/Tokens#Allowing_public_registration is the way to go.

www.limesurvey.org/manual/Workarounds:_S...change_answers_later


To program/query limesurvey via an external software you can take a look at the API:
www.limesurvey.org/manual/RemoteControl_2_API

If you ask further question or other questions please add further infos e.g. LimeSurvey Version, OS, Database. Thanks.

Okay, this is exactly what I was looking for !


I did not think to this point of data protection, but if you export and publish the result, it is the same, isn't it ?

I am going to take a look at this API.

Yes Holch,

The point is that I would NOT my father to have to export ;
I would like an automatic listing online that everyone can check... Without all the fields, of course !

I don't think that Limesurvey is made for what you are trying to do (but I am still not 100% sure what you are trying to do... ).

Limesurvey is for survey, which you usually submit once and that's it. No review, no nothing.

What kind of data are you collecting?

If everyone can check it, this can cause serious data protection problems, as Jelo said. I don't know about what kind of data we are talking, but if I submit a form, usually I don't want everyone to be able to check what I wrote.

"subscription to an official programm,"

So I assume that there are many personal information involved. You might be able to display all the responses on the last page via Expressions. So you could include before the end page some text display, that reads the previous questions and display what they wrote. Then they need to confirm that this is correct.

However, this is within the same process. From what I understood, you want them to submit. Then be able to go back and revise?

Personally, I would assume that someone who is not willing to check what he is doing in the first place, chances are little that they do a revision. I might be wrong here.

Hummm, to explain you more in details :


My father is not really a teacher, but an academic advisor.
He coordinates a departmental project allowing subscribed teacher's classes to go to a cinema, watching nationally selected movies, four times a year.

He has to use LimeSurvey (he does not have the choice of the technology : it is imposed by the french National Education) to make the department teachers subscribe to the project.
After the subscription, he just want the teachers to check if their name appear on any listing, because he cannot make an email-based registration, as many teachers does not use their e-mail addresses. (yes, really...)
I do not even need to make the users able to edit their subscription... Just to check if their name is in the list or not.

So this is basically what I wanted to do for him :
An online table, automatically checking the names of the subscribers, so they can immediately check online if the subscription is successful, without waiting for my father's export.

OK, now we are talking! Understood! A little weird that Limesurvey is impossed to anyone, but I guess we (and especially your father) will have to live with that.

I assume it would be no problem if others can see the list with all the names?

I was thinking that you could use the "public statistics" feature. But, unfortunately, you can't include open ended questions.

Does your father have the names of the teachers? In this case you could have a drop-downlist with all the names. Then it should be possible.

Or, would an confirmation email do? You could send an confirmation email to an email inserted in the Limesurvey form. But I guess this is not an option, if the teachers do not use their email addresses...

At the end of the day, there is always the possibility for you to write your own php script, reading the names from the results database and write it to a confirmation page (you can even redirect to this script in the end-url). But you would need to custom code this and you need to have access to the server and the database. Is Limesurvey hosted by your father / you or on a government server?

I am affraid it is on a government server, or at least academic server, so I do not think I could write any custom code in it, in fact, but it is a question I can ask !

The email-way is not reliable because of the reasons you already know ;

And there is of course no problem that some people see the list, it is just going to be some names...

Don't know if the "statistics" feature can help me ?

Well, I highly doubt that the government will let you have your custom script on the server. This would probably have been the cleanest solution.

I made a little test (see the attached survey): The statistics feature can only help you, if you have the names of all possible teachers beforehand. Then you can create a list of names and the teacher chooses his/her name from the list (please note that they could choose another name as well, but this could also happen if you let them write into a text box).

Then at the end of the survey there is a link to the public statistics (you have to enable the respective question in the advanced features for the "public statistics".

However, it does not show a simple list, but a little bit more.

If I may ask: Why is it so important that they can see this list?