Pre-set default values

[Venustiano]

From the Formr documentation I can see that we can create a 'value' column to pre-set 'default' values using R code as follows

 a_different_survey$item1 + a_different_survey$item2 

If I understand correctly, to be able to use such a technique, a_different_survey must be in the Formr server. In our case, this is not the case. The survey data is in excel/google sheets. So, I have a couple of questions.

1. Is there a way to populate a_different_survey programmatically in Formr?
2. Is it possible to pre-set values using data directly from excel files?

Thanks in advance

Venus

[dfeistauer]

Hi Venus,

write your R-Code in the column "value" in Excel.
Sometimes you need to use as.numeric()
between item2 and the pre-set-Variable needs to be a submit-Button.

Daniela

[Venustiano]

Indeed, I had to use as.numeric()
Thanks for the advice

[Venustiano]

How do pre-set a value when the type is select_one?
In the R source code, the selected value is OK, but in the form the value is not selected as in the screenshot below. Gegevens gemeente (prev) should be one of the options in the drop down menu.

[dfeistauer]

please send a screenshot of your excel sheet

[Venustiano]

Thank you for your quick reply.

Thanks to your request I realized that I did not capitalize the name column.

Now it works fine.

[dfeistauer]

I meant the excel with the value column.

[Venustiano]

The value column is like this

But the problem was that values in the data are capitalized but my name column was not. I had something like groningen and Groningen

[dfeistauer]

great

[Venustiano]

Hello again,

Is there a way to create 'persistent' variable across questions. For example, in the screenshot below the variable gname_prev, in row 4 which is loaded from googledrive, cannot be reused in row 6.

It leads to the following error.

R Error: object 'gname_prev' not found

In call:
(function() {
    previous_value <- gname_prev[which(as.numeric(gname_prev$rangnr) == 
        id_prev_survey), "Algtelefoonnummer"]
    previous_value
})()

To fix the error I have to load the data again

Is there a way to reuse variables in Formr?

Thanks in advance

[rubenarslan]

Maybe this example helps: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jkts0xp1JmFX5t1A34kLswH7ZyWWn8xArKeCH2-pzH4/edit#gid=2037039862

You could also set a global variable using gname_prev <<- rio::etc, I haven't tested this.

[Venustiano]

Thank you for your suggestions @rubenarslan,

The global variable works in a single page, moving to the next page, the variable has to be loaded again. It is better than loading the variable per question. However, it would be much better if this could work across pages.

Regarding the google sheet example,

library(ggplot2)
data(diamonds)
selected <- diamonds[sample(nrow(diamonds),size = 180) ,]
jsonlite::toJSON(selected)

it is not clear to me how the variable selected could be reused without loading the data again. At least I can not see it in the example. Am I missing something?

[rubenarslan]

Hi @Venustiano maybe provide some more information on your use case. In the example, the R variable "selected" is stored as JSON in the variable "item_list" in formr. You're correct that R variables do not persist across page loads.

[Venustiano]

Hi @rubenarslan

Basically, I need to create multiple pages. For each page, I need to read data (from a google sheet) from previous surveys. However, reading/loading data for each page is very slow. Reading the data only once will improve user experience. It is also better during the testing phase.

I have noticed that a type number variable persists across pages. However, a type hidden does not. For example, in the screenshot below, id_prev_survey persist across all pages, but gname_prev which stores google sheet persist only in the same page. For the next page I have to load the data again, otherwise I get an error.

Do you know how to make gname_prev persistent across pages?

Thanks