surveydown

Unlike graphic-interface survey platforms, surveydown uses plain text files, making surveys easy to version control with Git. A typical survey consists of two primary files:

• survey.qmd: A Quarto document containing the survey content (pages, questions, etc.).
• app.R: An R script defining the Shiny app. This file contains global settings (such as loaded libraries and database configuration) and server configuration options (such as conditional skipping or display logic).

Before installing the {surveydown} package, ensure you have the following installed on your system:

1. R
2. Quarto

It is recommended to use an IDE with strong support for R, Quarto, and Shiny, such as RStudio, VSCode, or Positron.

surveydown is an open-source, markdown-based platform for creating programmable and reproducible surveys. It leverages a stack of R, Quarto, Shiny, and PostgreSQL (such as Supabase) to allow developers to define surveys as plain text, making them easy to version control with Git and share with others.

The workflow consists of three main steps:

1. Design: Create a Quarto document (survey.qmd) using markdown and R code to define pages and questions.
2. Render: Convert the Quarto document into a Shiny app for online hosting and respondent interaction.
3. Store: Save survey responses in a PostgreSQL database (Supabase is the recommended option).

Unlike traditional survey platforms that use GUIs, surveydown uses two primary plain-text files to define a survey, enabling full version control and reproducibility:

• survey.qmd: A Quarto document containing the survey content, such as pages and questions.
• app.R: An R script that defines the Shiny application. This file contains global settings (libraries, database configuration) and server configuration options (e.g., conditional skipping or display logic).

You can install the stable version of {surveydown} from CRAN or the development version from GitHub.

To install from CRAN:

install.packages("surveydown")

To install the development version using pak:

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak('surveydown-dev/surveydown')

After installation, load the package and verify your version:

library(surveydown)
surveydown::sd_version()

# Install from CRAN
install.packages("surveydown")

# OR install development version
# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak('surveydown-dev/surveydown')

# Load and check version
library(surveydown)
surveydown::sd_version()