So I'm creating a game for work, which grabs question and answer data from a JSON file that someone helped me create. All I want to figure out, is how to make the string that is returned from the data below display with line breaks for each of the multiple choice answers:
{
"question": "1",
"text" : "How many times has the Actuarial computer lab been moved? A. Once B. Twice C. Six times D. Fifteen times",
"answer" : "1,1"
},
I've been googling for a while (lots of Stackoverflow threads) but every solution appears to be something different or slightly more complex than what I want to do.
Here is how I'm displaying the string into my div:
var displayDiv = $("#textdisplay");
displayDiv.text(question.text);
You probably want to add <br/> or <p> tags to your text in the JSON file itself. If you've got a text editor that can do regex string replacement, then you want to do something like
Find: ([ABCD]\.\s)
Replace: <br/>$1
Or if you're on a machine with sed, you can use
sed -E 's/([ABCD]\. )/<br\/>\1/g' test.txt
That'd be my recommendation, at least. If you can't change the JSON file, use the same Regex to add breaks in JavaScript, like so:
question.text.replace(/([ABCD]\. )/g, '<br/>$1')
Related
When you export response data from Qualtrics as a CSV, the 2nd row of the data contains strings with the question stem (shortened if necessary), followed by a dash, followed by that response column's corresponding choice. As an example, if my question were "Please select all of the fruit you enjoy:", in my response data the second row of a response column to this question might contain something like "Please select all of the fruit you enjoy:-Blueberries".
Qualtrics shortens the question stem if it is longer than 100 characters. If it is more than 100 characters, the stem is cut off after the 99th character, "..." is appended, and then the dash, and then the choice text.
I am trying to retrieve the text that is after this dash. However, that's difficult, because both the choice text and the question text could contain dashes. I have thought of two different approaches I could take in attempting to select just the choice text:
I have the question text, and can reliably programmatically retrieve it based on the response column name. However, the question text doesn't always match exactly, because Qualtrics removes any HTML styling in the Question text in the response data, but not in the Qualtrics survey file that I am getting the question text from. For questions that don't have any HTML styling, I was thinking about trying to use the question text to somehow match up to and including the dash between the question text and the choice text. I think regex could handle this case fine, but this clearly doesn't work without heavy modification for any questions that have HTML components.
The alternative I think might be more reliable. Strip the question text from the QSF file of any HTML tags, and then count how many "-" characters appear in the question text. Call that n, and then match the 2nd-row-response-entry for up to the n+1th dash, remove it, and what's remaining is my choice text.
I think the 2nd option is much more likely to work consistently, since the first option leaves me with a case where I have to try and strip html from the question text in exactly the same way Qualtrics does, unless I use fuzzy matching (which I know nothing about). However, the second option is also unclear to me.
an example csv response set
For example, the first question's question text looks like this in the QSF:
"<div style=\"text-align: center;\">Click to write the question text
<span style=\"font-size: 10.8333px;\">thsi<sup>tasdf<em>werasfd</em></sup>
<em>sdfad</em></span><br />\n </div>"
I would appreciate both of the following: advice on which option (or a suggestion for another) you think has the most chance for success, and help with the regex in R for matching the text up to the n+1th "-" character.
Here's a solution that counts the dashes in the question, locates the nth dash in the text (if any) and drops the preceding characters, and then keeps the substring that follows the next dash in the text.
stem_text <- "Please--select your extracurriculars"
s <- "<em>Please</em>--select your extracurriculars-student-athletics"
# count dashes in question stem
stem_dash_n <- length(gregexpr("-", stem_text)[[1]])
# locate dashes in string
s_dashes <- gregexpr("-", s)[[1]]
sub_start <- ifelse(length(s_dashes), s_dashes[stem_dash_n], 1)
s_sub <- substr(s, sub_start + 1, nchar(s))
sub("[^\\-]*\\-(.*)", "\\1", s_sub, perl = TRUE)
# [1] "student-athletics"
Assumptions: based on your description, length(s_dashes) >= stem_dash_n, so s_dashes[stem_dash_n] exists; the same number of dashes appear in the known stems and their representations in the text; and there is always a dash separating the stem and response choice.
I have a table that stores html templates in a mysql database. Now I have to perform some text replacement on them. However my target text is also present in some of the anchor tags and I don't want that to be replaced.
EX :
<body> ... (has huge html crap)... .........(Some more html crap) ... (a bit more of html crap) ... </body>
Task is to replace the occurrences of the "KEYWORD" with "NEW KEYWORD" in the body but not the urls.
It would also be helpful if I can first find such cases where the KEYWORD is a part of a link in a given template.
MySQL is not capable of such advanced string manipulation.
However, if you were to have a one-time-use PHP script do the editing (ie. select from the table, for each row process and update), you can do this:
// foreach row as $row
$newtext = preg_replace("(<a\b.*?>(*SKIP)(*FAIL)|KEYWORD)","NEW KEYWORD",$row['data']);
What this does is look for links (very approximate Regex but should suffice in almost all cases here), then skip over them. Then, it looks for KEYWORD and replaces it with NEW KEYWORD.
You can use this to quickly and easily handle the replacement.
If that "almost all cases" thing above turns out to not be enough, you can use DOMDocument to load the HTML into a parser and process text nodes only from there.
Maybe you could find the cases where the KEYWORD is a part of a link with something like this:
SELECT * FROM tbl WHERE html REGEXP '<a[^>]*KEYWORD';
I write news for my website and format it like this:
[h1]News[h1]
[red]Happy New Year[/red]
[white]Happy New Year[/white]
The news are stored as is on the MySQL DB.
Then when it's called by my website, a function converts every code into HTML format.
[h1][/h1] = <h1></h1>
[red][/red] = <font color=red></font>
I'm not happy with this method for a long time, but now such codes are obsolet for HTML5.
Instead of using I should add it to CSS.
I'm very beginner with PHP, MySQL, CSS, HTML...really, but I'm trying and learning.
So, what I need is the best solution for this matter.
I was thinking to create a CSS rule like:
span.news-red { color=red }
span.news-white { color=white }
And then them into the code for red text, etc...
Is this an effective solution or just a palliative?
Thank you.
EDIT
I have this two functions to convert format of my text in order to be outputed for the visitor.
1st = Converts [white-text][/white-text] into
$string = preg_replace("/\[white-text\](\S+?)\[\/white-text\]/si","<font color=white>\\1</font>", $string);
2nd - Converts [url][/url] into
$string = preg_replace("/\[url\](\S+?)\[\/url\]/si","\\1", $string);
Problems:
WHITE-TEXT - It only changes the color of one word phrases.
URL - It works fine, but I would like to be able to write anything in the readable part of the URL.
In general, you want to have styles of text that are common. Give them descriptions as to why you are doing what you are doing. If I were you, I would name them something as to what they are in the db. Then let's say you decide that Red is just a horrible choice of colors. You could always change it to a different one very easily, just by editing the CSS.
Not knowing why you choose to make something red, I can't give you much of an answer, other than to try and use the css name that relates to why you chose red, rather than what you are doing in the first place.
I have been looking for a way to capture structured text (sections, paragraphs, emphasis, lists, etc.) in JSON, but I haven't found anything yet. Any suggestions? (Markdown crossed my mind, but there might be something better out there.)
How about something like this:
[ { "heading": "Foobar Example" },
{ "paragraph":
[
"This is normal text, followed by... ",
{ "bold": "some bold text" },
"etc."
]
}
]
That is:
use a string for plain text without formatting or other mark-up;
use an array whenever you want to indicate an ordered sequence of certain text elements;
use an object where the key indicates the mark-up and the value the text element to which the formatting is applied.
HTML is a well-established way to describe structured text, in a plain-text format(!). Markdown (as you mentioned) would work as well.
My view is that your best bet is probably going to be using some sort of plain-text markup such as those choices, and place your text in a single JSON string variable. Depending on your application, it may make sense to have an array of sections, containing an array of paragraphs, containing an array of normal/bold/list sections etc. However, in the general case I think good old-fashioned blocks are markup will ironically be cleaner and more scalable, due to the ease of passing them around, and the well-developed libraries for full-blown parsing if/when required.
There also seems to be a specification that might accomplish this Markdown Syntax for Object Notation (MSON)
Not sure if for you it's worth the trouble of implementing the spec, but it seems to be an option.
What is the best format to communicate an array of strings in one string to users who are not geeks?
I could do it like this:
Item1, Item2, Item3
But that becomes meaningless when the strings contain spaces and commas.
I could also do it this way:
"Item1", "Item2", "Item3"
However, I would like to avoid escaping the array elements because escaped characters can be confusing to the uninitiated.
Edit: I should have clarified that I need the formatted string to be one-line. Basically, I have a list of lists displayed in a .Net Winforms ListView (although this question is language-agnostic). I need to show the users a one-line "snapshot" of the list next to the list's name in the ListView, so they get a general idea of what the list contains.
You can pick a character like pipe (|) which are not used much outside programs. It also used in wiki markup for tables which may be intuitive to those who are familiar with wiki markup.
Item1| Item2| Item3
In a GUI or color TUI, shade each element individually. In a monochrome TUI, add a couple of spaces and advance to the next tab position (\t) between each word.
Using JSON, the above list would look like:
'["Item1", "Item2", "Item3"]'.
This is unambiguous and a syntax in widespread use. Just explain the nested syntax a little bit and they'll probably get it.
Of course, if this is to be displayed in a UI, then you don't necessarily want unambiguous syntax as much as you want it to actually look like something intended for the end user. In that case it would depend exactly how you are displaying this to the user.
Display each element as a cell in a table.
How about line breaks after each string? :>
Display each string on a separate line, with line numbers:
1. Make a list
2. Check it twice
3. Say something nice
It's the way people write lists in the real world, y'know :)
Use some kind of typographical convention, for example a bold hashmark and space between strings.
milk # eggs # bread # apples # lettuce # carrots
CSV. Because the very first thing your non-technical user is going to do with delimited data is import it into a spreadsheet.