CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptjsondatabasealgorithm
Nick D
Nick D

Reputation: 125

What is the right way to store user's quiz/test answer?

I build quiz/test application. It has 2 tables in database.

First one, Quiz table:

quizes
--------
title
.....
questions

Questions structure

{
"answer": "rightanswer", 
"index": 0, 
"question": "What is the right answer?", 
"answers": [
     "answers1", 
     "answers2", 
     "answers3", 
     "answers4"
   ], 
}

And I have separate table to store users answers (user_answers).

user_answers
-----
id
quiz_id
.....
answers

So, my question is, what is the right way to store user answers.

First way:

Once user open quiz page copy all questions to user_answers/answer column. And just push into question his answer and mark, and then update user_answers/answer.

Second way

Once user open quiz page init blueprint json:

{
  "index": 0
  "mark": 5
}

After answer on push this json to array and update user_answers/answer, and every time just merge questions and answers arrays like:

for (let i = 0; i < questions.length; i++) {
    for (let j = 0; j < userAnswers.length; j++) {
        if (userAnswers[j].index == i) {
            questions[i].mark = userAnswers[j].mark;
         }
     } 
 }

Both of ways have disadvantages In first one you have to make copy of questions a lot of times. In second one loop will take a lot of time if quiz has many questions.

So what is the right way?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1640

Answers (3)

Ashok Mandal
Ashok Mandal

Reputation: 278

I can suggest a better a way to store your questions, Lets say you have a question schema:

{ 
  "qid" : 0,
  "question": "What is the answer",
  "answers": [
    { "text" : "Answer one" , "isAnswer" : false },
    { "text" : "Answer two" , "isAnswer" : false },
    { "text" : "Answer three" , "isAnswer" : true }
  ]
}

And for answers schema

{
  "quizId" : 10,
  "qid" : 0,
  "answerId" : 0 // <- here index , but you can take unique answer ids also for a question
}

this way you just need run one loop to get the answers , or write a little complex aggregate query to get the answers

Upvotes: 2

hanshenrik
hanshenrik

Reputation: 21513

i'd probably just have a table like

CREATE TABLE `answers` (
  `id` INTEGER NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `user_id` INTEGER,
  `quiz_id` INTEGER,
  `quiz_question_id` INTEGER, 
  `answer` VARCHAR(200),
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
);
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX no_duplicate_answers ON answers (user_id,quiz_id,quiz_question_id);

Upvotes: 0

amir nazari
amir nazari

Reputation: 13

It depends on you, besides I prefer the later, your second solution is a loop and it's happening on the client's machine, so it's not too important! I think it's fast enough to generate 1000 question less than a second so it's ok!

Upvotes: 0

Related Questions