# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("surveydown-dev/surveydown")Announcing surveydown v1.0.0!
Software
Survey
A stable release of
surveydown with experience improvements to YAML, navigation, and question creation.
We are thrilled to announce the v1.0.0 release of surveydown, a stable release with improvements to YAML settings, page navigation, question creation, and a smoother overall developer experience.
Installation
Verion 1.0.0 is coming to CRAN soon, but in the meantime you can upgrade to it by installing it from GitHub:
Now, let’s check out the new features!
YAML settings
A YAML header is used in every .qmd file as metadata to define page behavior. The survey.qmd file in each surveydown survey also relies on the YAML header, but we’ve made some significant changes to improve the experience.
YAML omission: First, you no longer need to include any YAML header at all now as surveydown now auto-loads the following:
---
format: html
echo: false
warning: false
---This used to be the standard YAML header in survey.qmd, but now if you leave it out, these settings will be used by default.
New YAML experience: An empty YAML is fine if you want to use all default settings, so your survey.qmd file can start directly with your library calls and survey content:
```{r}
library(surveydown)
library(other_packages)
```
Survey content...YAML settings: We have also expanded the YAML header to include all other survey settings to customize your survey behavior. Below is a full list of all possible YAML settings with their default values, including theme, survey, and system message settings. The comprehensive list of settings used in any one survey are generated in your _survey/settings.yml file of any surveydown survey project.
---
theme-settings:
theme: default
barposition: top
footer-left: ''
footer-center: ''
footer-right: ''
survey-settings:
show-previous: no
use-cookies: no
auto-scroll: no
rate-survey: no
all-questions-required: no
start-page: your_first_page
system-language: en
highlight-unanswered: yes
highlight-color: gray
capture-metadata: yes
required-questions: []
system-messages:
cancel: Cancel
confirm-exit: Confirm Exit
sure-exit: Are you sure you want to exit the survey?
submit-exit: Submit and Exit
warning: Warning
required: Please answer all required questions before proceeding.
rating-title: Before you go...
rating-text: 'Rate your survey experience:'
rating-scale: from 1-poor to 5-excellent
previous: Previous
next: Next
exit: Exit Survey
close-tab: Please close this tab manually to exit the survey.
choose-option: Choose an option...
click: Click here
redirect: Redirecting in
seconds: seconds
new-tab: Opens in a new tab
redirect-error: "Error: This text won't trigger any redirection..."
---You can customize any of them in survey.qmd to fit your survey needs. For example, say you want to enable cookies, you can have these YAML settings in your survey.qmd file (cookies are on by default):
---
survey-settings:
use-cookies: yes
---Note also the system-messages category. Here you can customize the text of all system messages used in your survey. For example, to change the “Next” button label to “Continue”, you can do this:
---
system-messages:
next: Continue
---This used to be handled in a separate translations.yml file, but now they’re all consolidated into the YAML header for easier access.
Previous Button Support
One of the most requested features is finally here: previous buttons! Survey respondents can now navigate backwards through your survey, and you have full control over whether to enable this feature globally or on a per-page basis.
Global setting: By default, previous buttons are not enabled, but you can enable them globally by changing the YAML header setting in the survey.qmd file:
---
survey-settings:
show-previous: true
---Page-Level override: You can override the global setting on specific pages using the newly introduced sd_nav() function in your survey.qmd file:
# Enable previous button on a page
sd_nav(show_previous = TRUE)
# Disable previous button on a page
sd_nav(show_previous = FALSE)Here are examples of previous button being enabled and disabled:
Previous button disabled
Previous button enabled
sd_question() Enhancements
Since surveydown is built on top of shiny, we originally used the singular word option to define multiple-choice options in sd_question() (this is what shiny uses). But this can be confusing, since most of the time you want to provide multiple options (plural).
To address this, now both option and options are supported for sd_question() when using multiple-choice type questions, such as mc, mc_buttons, etc.
Auto label to value conversion: When defining option or options, the traditional way to define options is the pattern label = value, like this:
sd_question(
id = "favorite_color",
type = "mc",
label = "What's your favorite color?",
options = c(
"Light Blue" = "light_blue",
"Dark Green" = "dark_green",
"Bright Red" = "bright_red"
)
)But in case you forget this pattern, you can now just provide a single vector of labels like this:
sd_question(
id = "favorite_color",
type = "mc",
label = "What's your favorite color?",
options = c(
"Light Blue",
"Dark Green",
"Bright Red"
)
)In this case, the value stored in the data will be automatically converted to snake case. In this example, the above question will store the following values in the database:
| Display Label | Database Value |
|---|---|
| Light Blue | light_blue |
| Dark Green | dark_green |
| Bright Red | bright_red |
What’s Next?
This v1.0.0 release marks a major milestone for surveydown, but we’re not stopping here. We have exciting features planned for future releases. Stay tuned!
As always, we welcome your feedback and contributions. If you encounter any issues or have suggestions, please open an issue for the package, create a discussion in our organization, or contribute directly via pull requests.
Happy surveying!