user guide

qjsp is a java j2ee server sided application. It is used to do online questionnaires via the intra/ internet. Therefore, you first have to create a questionnaire file. This is a file which contains the questions and is written in xml using a special xml schema (xsd). This a quite easy task, with a good xsd-aware editor and a little training even an un experienced user should be able to do that.

Those questionnaire files are moved to the server. The server provides a user management (e.g. create user, log them in and out, ..., those information are stored in a xml file). After login in, the the questionnaire is transformed into plain html code and presented to the user.

The user now answers the questions, and, after the questions are completely answered, the result a saved into a result xml file.

Beside the standard java j2se 1.4 and j2ee 1.4beta libraries, following components are used:

apache jakarta struts 1.2 for the web framework (provides a clear and easy design)
saxon 7.1 for xslt transformations
WebMacro as template engine for presenting the questionnaires
sun jaxb for xml binding to the user db.

The qjsp system is able to handle numerous questionnaires. To create your own questionnaire, you have to write a xml file describing the structure and the questions you want to have. Each questionnaire source file has to follow the questionairexml.xsd.

After that, you have to save the questionnaire into the /qjsp/WEB-INF/quest folder. When requested the first time, the questionnaire will be initialized by the system

Note: There may be problems with non-standard characters (e.g. language specific chars like ä,ö,ü,ß,...).

Please refer the schema documentation documentation of questionairexml.xsd

A simple questionaire file with one question could look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<questionaire xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="questionairexml.xsd">

<name>Studienkurzfragebogen</name>

<description>Dieser Fragebogen erfasst eine Kurzzusamenfassung der Studiensituation.</description>

<author>

<firstname>Christoph</firstname>

<name>Lofi</name>

</author>

<date>2003-12-12</date>

<styleSheet>questionairestyle.css</styleSheet>

<questionaireForm>

<page>

<block>

<blockID>Block1</blockID>

<questions>

<qFreetext>

<questionText>qFreetext: Please enter an arbitary freetext:</questionText>

<ID>freetext</ID>

</qFreetext>

</questions>

</block>

</page>

</questionaireForm>

</questionaire>

			

You can provide own css files. Those files have to be stored in the /qjsp/ root directory. When specifying a css in a questionnaire xml, enter only he filename including the extension.
Following styles should be contained in a css for qjsp:

• body
  Used for the normal text and backgrounds.
  
• h1
  That's the style of the page headlines.
  
• h2
  Used for block headlines.
  
• h6
  Small font for footer annotations.
  
• .error
  Style used for error messages. A smaller font with an other color should be used.
  
• .optional
  Style used for the "question is optional" message.
  
• .questText
  That's the style used for displaying the question text (question itself, additional info, ...)
  
• .statementheader
  This style is used for the scale of statement questions (also for YesNo, SemDiff, Select, ...)
  
• .statementText
  This style is used for the single text labels in statement questions (also for YesNo, SemDiff, Select, ...)
  
• .invisibleText
  Indicates text that should be invisible (so, the same color as the background).

Actions are called with the relative url /do/"actionname" in a web browser.

There are different actions, separated in two classes: those, which the user can call in his url
and those which are used by the system.

You can provide the system with a parameter named "quest" which contains the name of the questionnaire to be displayed (only the name, no path or extensions).

user callable actions

system callable actions

You can customize the texts displayed in the jsp pages before showing the questionaire (login, registration, ...). To do so, you need to alter the files ApplicationResources_de.properties for the german version or ApplicationResources.properties for the english version.
You can do that either directly in your unpacked webapp in the application server (search for the files) or in the sources of the source distribution (refer developpers guide).