VoteCounter

Summary: Count & summarize votes
Version: 2010-01-31
Prerequisites:
Status: Experimental
Maintainer: Peter Bowers
Users: +2 (View / Edit)

Questions answered by this recipe

How can I get a count & summary of votes/ratings placed in a list on a page?

Description

Count & summarize votes. Votes indicated by an asterisk followed by a rating in parentheses followed by optional comment

Notes

Given a list of votes (asterisk or hash followed by some rating text within parentheses followed by optional freeform comment), 5 page variables are populated by this recipe:

Sample Data:

* (+) This is a good recipe
* (++) Not just good, great!
* (+) I'm satisfied
* (+) It'll do the job
* (-) Didn't work for me.
* (+2) I really liked it

The rating text within parentheses can be arbitrary text, but +, ++, and - are recommended. Specifically any vote *not* beginning with a + or a - will be ignored for the VoteSum and VoteWeightedSum options.

PV NameDescriptionOutput
{$VoteCount}Total count of votes6
{$VoteDetail}A summary of the rating text contained within parentheses. (VoteDetails also acceptable)+(3), ++(1), -(1), +2(1)
{$Votes}Combination of vote count and vote details.6: +(3), ++(1), -(1), +2(1)
{$VoteSum}Sum of plus's minus minuses (++ or +2 or -- is 1).4
{$VoteWeightedSum}Sum of + minus - (++ is 2, +3 is 3, etc.).6

There is also a (:votecounter ARGS:) markup as an alternative to the PVs. It allows more flexibility, including accessing votes from a page section, returning multiple values with a single read of the page, etc. Arguments (ARGS) follow:

page=group.page#textSpecifies an alternate page to be read. Sections are allowed if Toolbox is installed)
detailfmt="{RATETEXT}({COUNT})"Specify an alternate format for the details. 2 "macros" substituted: {RATETEXT} and {COUNT}. Default is {RATETEXT}({COUNT}).
detailsep=", "Specify an alternate separater between detail "chunks"
votes|votedetail|votecount|votesum|voteweightedsum0 or more of these can be specified as stand-alone arguments (case-insensitive)
"Some other text: "Text not matching patterns above will be output verbatim to allow a somewhat formatted output
maxweight=nSpecify the maximum weight a single vote can carry for {$VoteWeightedSum}. Default is 4. This prevents a single very positive or very negative vote from overly influencing the weighted sum.

Examples of the (:votecounter ...:) markup:

(:votecounter votedetails:)

VoteCounter($pagename, $pagename, "votedetails")

(:votecounter "Here is a count: " votecount "and a weighted sum: " VoteWeightedSum:)

VoteCounter($pagename, $pagename, ""Here is a count: " votecount "and a weighted sum: " VoteWeightedSum")

(:votecounter page=Cookbook.VoteCounter-Sandbox "Sum from another page: " votesum:)

VoteCounter($pagename, $pagename, "page=Cookbook.VoteCounter-Sandbox "Sum from another page: " votesum")

(:votecounter page=Cookbook.VoteCounter-Sandbox#subset detailsep="..." votedetails:) (Note: the [[Toolbox]] recipe is not activated on this pmwiki.org page and so sections do not work here.)

VoteCounter($pagename, $pagename, "page=Cookbook.VoteCounter-Sandbox#subset detailsep="..." votedetails") (Note: the Toolbox recipe is not activated on this pmwiki.org page and so sections do not work here.)

Sandbox

Make changes to Cookbook.VoteCounter-Sandbox?action=edit to see the results here:

Current contents of the Cookbook.VoteCounter-Sandbox page:


Click here to go back to the VoteCounter recipe to see the results of the sandbox

  • (+) vote
  • (+) some other content Sam
    • (2,5) testing indentation and non integer
  • (-) I didn't like it Anonymous?
  • (sam) an example of how arbitrary text can be used as a "rating"
  • (sam) +sam
  • (+2) What a great idea! Susie?

  • (+2) Best ever! Mathilda?
  • This line is ignored because it has no rating in parentheses
  • (++) Another way of saying i really like it Mr Optimist?
  • (+) It'll do even though I didn't call
  • (++++) It'll do even though I didn't call
  • (+) Any other thoughts?
  • (+) Strange
  • ([-]) The "unticked" flipbox
  • ([-]) The "unticked" flipbox
  • ([+]) The "ticked" flipbox
  • ([q]) The "question" flipbox

Note that lines that don't follow the asterisk-openparen-rating-closeparen pattern are simply ignored.


Votecount PVs based on the sandbox page above

{$VoteCount}17
{$VoteDetail}+(5), 2,5(1), -(1), sam(2), +2(2), ++(1), ++++(1), [-](2), [+](1), [q](1)
{$Votes}17: +(5), 2,5(1), -(1), sam(2), +2(2), ++(1), ++++(1), [-](2), [+](1), [q](1)
{$VoteSum}8
{$VoteWeightedSum}13

Installation

Place votecounter.phpΔ in your cookbook directory in include the usual

include_once("$FarmD/cookbook/votecounter.php");

in your config.php. For PHP 5.5 or newer please get votecounter72.phpΔ instead.

You can also set $vcDetailFmt and $vcDetailSep if you want to change the presentation of the detail section. In $vcDetailFmt occurrences of $k will be replaced with the rating text and occurrences of $v will be replaced with the count of the given rating text.

$vcMaxWeight can be set to fix a default maximum weight.

Release Notes

If the recipe has multiple releases, then release notes can be placed here. Note that it's often easier for people to work with "release dates" instead of "version numbers".

  • 2010-01-31: Fixed a bug where the semantics of "weighted vote" and "vote" were reversed. Added maxweight capabilities. (NOTE: I forgot to update the $RecipeInfo line when I originally uploaded this. I fixed that a week later but did not make a new release. If your SiteAnalyzer reports an error but you're sure you already updated, this is why... The new version (uploaded 2010-02-06) fixes this. Sorry.)
  • 2009-03-10: Fixed a bug related to absence of toolbox recipe, made it so setting detailfmt=x wouldn't change the global variable for all other invocations of votecounter markup.
  • 2009-03-09b: Added alternate (:votecounter ...:) to allow for sections, refactored code for flexibility.
  • 2009-03-09: Fixed a bug introduced in last release. Made arbitrary text for ratings case-insensitive.
  • 2009-03-08: Added capability for votes to occur at any level of either ordered lists or unordered lists (i.e., can be preceded by ** or *** or #### or whatever). Added {$VoteSum} and {$VoteWeightedSum}. Moved the recipe into the votecounter.php script instead of being in config.php directly. If you are upgrading you will need to delete the previous installation from config.php.
  • 2009-03-07: Added $vcDetailFmt and $vcDetailSep for flexibility on the detail presentation.
  • 2009-03-06: Initial release

See Also

  • SimpleRating a simple rating system
  • Rating A Quick and easy way for visitors to rate an item or issue.
  • Rating2 Even Simpler Page Rating Counter
  • StarRater 5 star rating system
  • FoxVoting examples of using Fox for voting, polling and making choices
  • RyeVoting Voting with several option and graph bars

Contributors

Comments

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