VoteCounter

Summary: Count & summarize votes

Version: 2010-01-31

Prerequisites:

Status: Experimental

Maintainer: Peter Bowers

Users: +2 (View / Edit)

Download: votecounter.php Δ

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 Name	Description	Output
`{$VoteCount}`	Total count of votes	6
`{$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#text	Specifies 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\|voteweightedsum	0 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=n	Specify 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.php Δ 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.php Δ 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

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

Contributors

Comments

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