I have a list of server environments (such as Shared Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, Customer A, Customer B, etc.) that are populated into a drop down list from an SQL query of an "Environment Table".  On that list, there is an option.  When and if the add new option is selected, I would like to display a previously hidden question allowing the user to key in a name of a new environment but I can't seem to make this work.  Which question do I tie the Question Event to? The environment question? Or the "Add New" question?  How can I make it so that ONLY the add new option fires the event? Do I have to add a check box option or something that ONLY has the 'Add New' option in it that drives the add new event?

Can someone explain this better to me?  Specifically, I need to know:

• Which 'question' does the event get placed on?
• Which question is the 'Initiation Response'?
• Which question is the 'Affected Question'?
• What is the 'Affected Question New Default Value'?

I've tried all kinds of ways, sometimes the hidden question never appears... sometimes it won't stay hidden.

Hi, well in your case to be safe you would only really only need to focus on either hiding all of the fields initially until the event fires or leaving all of the fields visible initially and hiding some based on a field response.

To answer your questions...

Which 'Question' does the event get placed on? - This is the field that you want to 'Trigger' the response. For example if you have a combo box named 'Color', with 'Blue', 'Green', 'Red' as options you would choose that the field 'Color' would be the postback question (initiation question). Then, any of the colors would represent the initiation response (i.e. Blue). So that is saying that when the user chooses an option from Color if they select 'Blue' its going to fire this question response.

What does the event do? Well the affected questions are going to be the question(s) that are actually affected when the user chooses 'Blue' from the 'Color' dropdownlist. In this case you would want to choose the event type to unhide questions that were previously hidden. Whatever question(s) you want to have visible select here.

Finally, there is a 3rd step because you are wanting to un-hide fields that were previously hidden event type you have to make that field initially hidden. In order to do this you need to specify for each field that you want to initially hide under the 'Advanced Field Properties' for each field under Manage Questions. There is a setting, 'Hide field until forced visible by question event' that you need to check.

You don't need to worry about the affected question new default value, this is only needed for a different event type.

If you have set it up as below and its still not working let me know and we can debug it further.

-Chad

Andrew,


Hi. Well in this case there are more features coming in this direction in 2.5 with the ability to show/hide/calculate fields based on client side events (do not require postback and can be done based on tab off of a textbox or any other field type etc...). I still don't believe you will be able to do what you are wanting though as this has 'SQL Injection' risks when you begin to implement a feature such as this.



Right now you can use dependent lists so that a dropdownlist 2 uses SQL that calls and uses dropdownlist 1 etc... This applies to field types for dropdownlists, radio buttons, checkboxlists, listbox's etc... So, in your case the textbox field wouldn't be able to be used. This is because a user could not enter a text such a case what would happens is something like LIKE %'''DELETE FROM USERS''' and depending on how they entered the text with ' and parentheses your site is at a large risk for SQL Injection. There are methods you can avoid this but this is not something we would want to enable for a majority of users as it leave them open for security risks.


-Chad

Andrew,

Hi. You might check out more information on SQL Injections and their risks here.

-Chad