NAME

HTML::Ballot::Trusting - HTML-template-based insercure multiple-choice ballot

SYNOPSIS

See "SETTING UP A POLL".

DESCRIPTION

A simple module for inseucre web ballots.

• a HTML page of voting options and one of the results of votes so far is generated from a single HTML template, and it is in these pages that ballot status is maintained, so no additional file access is required. This may be extended to include a ballot `time out'.

• HTML output into the template is minimal, but all unique entities are given a class attribute for easy CSS re-definitions.

• simple bar charts of results are generated using HTML. Options to have graphs based on single-pixels, or using the GD interface will arrive some time in the future.

• no test is made of who is voting, so users may vote any number of times, or may even vote (and surely will) thousands of times using a LWP hack. A more secure version is being constructed, which uses simple e-mail authentication of users, sending ony one voting password to any e-mail address: this may appear as HTML::Ballot::MoreCynical.

SYNOPSIS

There are three steps to creating a poll:

1. Create an HTML template file containing the following element inserted where the questions and answers are to be pasted:

   <TEMPLATEITEM name='QUESTIONS'></TEMPLATEITEM>

2. Construct a new HTML::Ballot::Trusting object, and call upon it the create method:

   use HTML::Ballot::Trusting;
   my $p = new HTML::Ballot::Trusting {
   	RPATH 	  => 'E:/www/leegoddard_com/vote/results.html',
   	SUBMITTO  => 'http://localhost/leegoddard_com/vote/vote.pl',
   	TPATH	  => 'E:/www/leegoddard_com/vote/template.html',
   	QPATH	  =>	'E:/www/leegoddard_com/vote/vote.html',
   	QUESTIONS => [ 'Why?', 'Why not?', 'Why what?' ]
   };
   $p->create();
   exit;

   See "CONSTRUCTOR (new)" and "METHOD create".

3. Create a page to call the vote (the script may yet produce such an item):

   use HTML::Ballot::Trusting;
   use CGI;
   our $VOTING_PAGE = "http://localhost/leegoddard_com/vote/vote.html";
   our $cgi = new CGI;
   if ($cgi->param() and $cgi->param('question') and $cgi->param('rpath') ){
   	$v = new HTML::Ballot::Trusting ( {RPATH=>$cgi->param('rpath')});
   	$v->cast_vote($cgi->param('question'));
   } else { print "Location: $VOTING_PAGE\n\n" }
   exit;

GLOBAL VARIABLES

CONSTRUCTOR (new)

Requires a reference to the class into which to bless, as well as a hash (or reference to such) with the following key/value content:

ARTICLE_ROOT

can over-ride the global constant of the same name;

URL_ROOT

can over-ride the global constant of the same name;

QUESTIONS

an array of questions to use in the ballot

TPATH

Path the HTML template may be found at

QPATH

Path at which to save the HTML ballot page

RPATH

Path at which to save the HTML results page

SUBMITTO

Path to the script that processes submission of the CGI voting form

METHOD create

Creates the HTML voting page.

Accepts: just the calling object: all properties used should be set during construction (see "CONSTRUCTOR (new)").

Returns: the path to the saved HTML question document.

The template file used to generate the question and answer pages should be an HTML page with the following markup inserted at the point that the FORM and radio-buttons should appear:

<TEMPLATEITEM name='QUESTIONS'></TEMPLATEITEM>

QUESTION PAGE

The action attribute of the FORM element is set to the CGI environment variable, SCRIPT_NAME (that is, the location of this script).

Form elements are simply seperated by linebreaks (BR): use CSS to control the layout: the radio-button HTML elements are set to be class voteoption; the SUBMIT button element is set to be class votesubmit.

RESULTS PAGE

HTML is used to create bar charts, but this should be easy to replace with a GD image, or a stretched single-pixel. Each question is given a TEMPLATEITEM element, and results will be placed within by the vote method (see "METHOD vote").

CSS: voteresults is the layer of the whole results section; votequestion is the question on the left; votescore is the number of votes recieved by the item; chart is the chart....

METHOD cast_vote

Casts a vote and updates the results file.

Accepts: the question voted for, as defined in the HTML vote form's INPUT/value.