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Reopening a completed survey erases existing responses -- is that normal?

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7 years 1 month ago #166853 by jelo
Replied by jelo on topic Reopening a completed survey erases existing responses -- is that normal?
I'm confused and impressed at the same time. You all developed scripts and plugins. Wouldn't it cost a lot less effort to open a bug-report first. "deleting" responses via accessing a link is a red alert.
The meaning of the word "stable" for users
www.limesurvey.org/forum/development/117...ord-stable-for-users
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7 years 1 month ago #166859 by Jane
Replied by Jane on topic Reopening a completed survey erases existing responses -- is that normal?
Hi jelo,

jelo wrote: I'm confused and impressed at the same time. You all developed scripts and plugins. Wouldn't it cost a lot less effort to open a bug-report first. "deleting" responses via accessing a link is a red alert.

We could not reproduce it yet. And neither could our customer. Our customer only received reports about blank surveys by respondents, when they should not be blank. So the only option was to log what was going on and analyze what went wrong at the next occurrence.

Of course, we will try to reproduce it now using the information in this topic.
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7 years 1 month ago #166942 by jelo
Replied by jelo on topic Reopening a completed survey erases existing responses -- is that normal?

Jane wrote: We could not reproduce it yet. And neither could our customer

I understand. But I still would recommend to open a bugticket first. The core developer team seems to like to follow the mantra release early, release often. The natural reaction for that mantra seems to be report early, report often ;-) So even a closed bug ticket with the comment "cannot reproduce" will be a indicator over time. If we see more and more closed tickets with the same topic the awareness will be raised.
The meaning of the word "stable" for users
www.limesurvey.org/forum/development/117...ord-stable-for-users
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7 years 1 month ago #167106 by Mazi
Replied by Mazi on topic Reopening a completed survey erases existing responses -- is that normal?
If I remember correctly we faced a similar issue last year with a token based survey we had set up for WHO. They also reported blank surveys randomly when re-enetering with the same token and using the same settings like "Token based answer persistance".
I couldn't really track it down and was assuming that it was caused by using multiple browsers or tabs at the same time which could mess up session details.
Best regards/Beste Grüße,
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survey-consulting.com
offlinesurveys.com
Feel free to contact me by email for professional LimeSurvey support!
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7 years 1 month ago #167121 by JanE01
Replied by JanE01 on topic Reopening a completed survey erases existing responses -- is that normal?
Hi Marcel,

Do you remember if the problems in the WHO case were limited to re-opening surveys that had already been submitted? Both oleggorfinkel and beth193 are indicating this. Was the effect that the existing reponses were wiped?

We tried hard to reproduce the problem, by opening the same survey in different tabs at the same time, opening it in other browsers, leaving sessions open for a really long time. But we never succeeded.

Our TFRResponseLogger plugin learned us that the existing answers are only loaded at the initial opening of the survey. Look at these lines in application/controllers/survey/index.php:
github.com/LimeSurvey/LimeSurvey/blob/ma...urvey/index.php#L540

If ($oResponse !== false), but somehow line 545 is not executed, you end up with a $oResponse that is
  1. set (because it !== false)
  2. does not contain the existing answers, which are in $oResponses[0].
That would explain the vanishing answers. I have no idea yet how $oResponse can !== false and not contain the existing answers.

$oResponse is initially defined in line 536:
Code:
$oResponse = $event->get('response');
If this line returns a not false $oResponse without existing answers, but with a set submitdate, line 545 will not be executed and we really are in troubles.

As a BTW: lines 542 and 546 contain a condition
Code:
isset($oResponse)
, but this condition will always return true, because of the earlier check on
Code:
$oResponse !== false
. Something that is not false cannot be not set at the same time.
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7 years 1 month ago #167140 by Mazi
Replied by Mazi on topic Reopening a completed survey erases existing responses -- is that normal?

JanE01 wrote: Hi Marcel,

Do you remember if the problems in the WHO case were limited to re-opening surveys that had already been submitted?

Yes, the goal was to let users re-enter any time to update their data set

JanE01 wrote: Hi Marcel,
Both oleggorfinkel and beth193 are indicating this. Was the effect that the existing reponses were wiped?

Yes, if I remember correctly this happened to 1-3 of ~120 data sets.

JanE01 wrote: Hi Marcel,
We tried hard to reproduce the problem, by opening the same survey in different tabs at the same time, opening it in other browsers, leaving sessions open for a really long time. But we never succeeded.

Our TFRResponseLogger plugin learned us that the existing answers are only loaded at the initial opening of the survey. Look at these lines in application/controllers/survey/index.php:
github.com/LimeSurvey/LimeSurvey/blob/ma...urvey/index.php#L540

If ($oResponse !== false), but somehow line 545 is not executed, you end up with a $oResponse that is

  1. set (because it !== false)
  2. does not contain the existing answers, which are in $oResponses[0].
That would explain the vanishing answers. I have no idea yet how $oResponse can !== false and not contain the existing answers.

$oResponse is initially defined in line 536:
Code:
$oResponse = $event->get('response');
If this line returns a not false $oResponse without existing answers, but with a set submitdate, line 545 will not be executed and we really are in troubles.

As a BTW: lines 542 and 546 contain a condition
Code:
isset($oResponse)
, but this condition will always return true, because of the earlier check on
Code:
$oResponse !== false
. Something that is not false cannot be not set at the same time.

Please check the bugtracker for similar issues or - if none found - please create a new ticket and share your details there so the developers can look into this and join the discussion.
Thanks!
Best regards/Beste Grüße,
Dr. Marcel Minke
survey-consulting.com
offlinesurveys.com
Feel free to contact me by email for professional LimeSurvey support!
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6 years 2 months ago #181371 by lemmon
Replied by lemmon on topic Reopening a completed survey erases existing responses -- is that normal?
I can confirm that this is still happening in version 3.15.9. We are currently running a very complex survey which takes the respondent well over an hour to complete. So far we have lost numerous responses because we had "Allow multiple responses or update responses with one token" enabled. We removed the "Clear Survey" button from the template (Vanilla) before launching, so it is not possible that user action is responsible for this. It also happened to one of the survey admins, who also wanted to take the survey in production. All he did was that he re-visited the link to go back and edit his responses, only to find his data had been wiped.

Needless to say, this is a very serious problem and unacceptable behavior from a survey application. There is no justification whatsoever that it randomly erases respondent data without at least warning the user, contrary to what some of the early respondents to this topic seem to suggest.

Has anyone reported a bug on this in the mean time?
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6 years 2 months ago #181378 by jelo
Replied by jelo on topic Reopening a completed survey erases existing responses -- is that normal?

lemmon wrote: So far we have lost numerous responses because we had "Allow multiple responses or update responses with one token" enabled.


I recommend to open a bugticket. Even if one is existing, you will get the answer "Test with newest version", cause the bugticket might has an older version in the metadata.
Always open a new ticket and then search for older ones. If you find older ones, leave a remark to point to your new ticket.

I would like to know the complete "Survey participant settings" for surveys showing this issue.
So put that in your bugticket too.

Needless to say, this is a very serious problem and unacceptable behavior from a survey application.

As far as I'm aware of LimeSurvey has no QA-team. The people which download the released version are the QA-team. Automated tests are used more and more. But testing the application with real surveys is something different.Discussing issues in the forum first, will delay bugtickets. Even if the bug is no bug, the bugticket might indicate a UI issue.
The meaning of the word "stable" for users
www.limesurvey.org/forum/development/117...ord-stable-for-users
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6 years 1 month ago #181723 by DenisChenu
Replied by DenisChenu on topic Reopening a completed survey erases existing responses -- is that normal?

lemmon wrote: I can confirm that this is still happening in version 3.15.9. We are currently running a very complex survey which takes the respondent well over an hour to complete. So far we have lost numerous responses because we had "Allow multiple responses or update responses with one token" enabled. We removed the "Clear Survey" button from the template (Vanilla) before launching, so it is not possible that user action is responsible for this. It also happened to one of the survey admins, who also wanted to take the survey in production. All he did was that he re-visited the link to go back and edit his responses, only to find his data had been wiped.
…
Has anyone reported a bug on this in the mean time?

What is checked on www.limesurvey.org/manual/Participant_se...response_persistence ?
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5 years 5 months ago #191489 by mos3465
Replied by mos3465 on topic Reopening a completed survey erases existing responses -- is that normal?
We encountered the same problem, Limesurvey version 3.5.0 (build 180309).
(I know, but I still wanted to contribute my findings...)

- It's a pretty big and complex survey as well
- we enabled "token-based response persistence"
- we allowed "multiple responses or update responses with one token"

We get occasional reports from respondents and our quality control team, that random variables are cleared upon re-accessing formely submitted surveys. In our case it's never the complete survey that is wiped, but from what I have seen so far it seems to be a complete question page in each instance.

I can also rule out that it's the some kind of user's fault, as there were 2 instances where the question that got cleared
1) was a mandatory List (radio) question where the users can't "de-select" once something is selected
2) is itself always shown (relevance=1) and was on a page with relevance=1 (so no messing with earlier questions that could have made the page / question irrelevant)
3) still has values for the same token in an earlier backup of the exported data

I didn't find anything on bugs.limesurvey.org, and I'd be happy to add a ticket, but then I
- don't have the latest version installed, although this seems to be an issue in later version as well (according to lemmon) - we are a bit afraid to apply Comfort Update now with the live survey
- the idea of minimal test case doesn't really apply as it only seems to be happening for sufficiently large surveys AND at random, making it not easily reproducible anyways (even with the original survey lss)

Any suggestions on how to progress? Is anyone aware of bug reports or maybe even solutions to this problem?
I gotta second lemmon in that it is a pretty serious problem, as this is hard, if not impossible to spot from just opening a survey to modify one or two things. So there are probably lots of unreported cases.
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5 years 5 months ago - 5 years 5 months ago #191497 by holch
Replied by holch on topic Reopening a completed survey erases existing responses -- is that normal?
I don't see much you can do at this stage. With the information provided it will be difficult to reproduce, as you said.

And with a version that is over 1,5 years old, if this is actually a bug it might be long solved. The most current version is 3.20.x, so there has changed a lot since your version has been released.

3) still has values for the same token in an earlier backup of the exported data

With your setting, this says very little, because you can have more than one response from the same token, as you allow multiple response with the same token.
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Last edit: 5 years 5 months ago by holch.
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5 years 5 months ago #191499 by jelo
Replied by jelo on topic Reopening a completed survey erases existing responses -- is that normal?

mos3465 wrote: Any suggestions on how to progress?

Open a bugticket, even with an old version. You will receive the answer that your version is old, but you might get the answer that there already is a bugticket for that and it was solved or not.

Install a fresh version of LimeSurvey beside your current installation and try to reproduce the issue there.
That is the only way to check Comfortupdates before applying them to production. A comfortupdate is not tested against many systems when it is released.
The meaning of the word "stable" for users
www.limesurvey.org/forum/development/117...ord-stable-for-users
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