Hi, I've created a multiple choice quiz pulling the questions from a defined dataURL on my own host. When viewing the quiz, the same question always appears as the first question and the answer in the exact same location. I am drawing from 300+ questions. I've specified in the Quiz Behavior to Randomize Question Order. Yet, the same question appear first!? Any help on how to shuffle the questions and answers would be appreciated.

Hi digira, The 'Randomize Question Order' option only applies to questions within the app, entered through the control panel. In your case you will need to write a script (.php?) accessed through your Data URL that will query your database and randomize the questions and answers returned.

Thanks. Has anyone done this before? Maybe some code lying around!

How hard would it be to randomize the answers?

@ maune12, It all depends on how you have your questions and answers stored. Are they 'hard coded' in a JSON .txt file or are they values in a database? Either way it would be a matter of coding logic to randomize the returned order of the answers and or questions. The difficulty of which depends on your coding ability.

Thanks Parker. I currently have a php script written for the quiz, but it doesn't work with the app (I don't know why). I've gone to the validation website and it comes back as a valid JSON format, but when I try to have the app use it all I get back is the problem parsing error make sure it is well formed. If I take the script that I get when I go to the site on my server where it's located and save it as a text file then direct the app to go to the text file, then it works. Any thoughts?

It kinda sounds like you might be outputting your result in HTML which then displays in a browser as valid JSON? Can you post a link to the script?

Thanks for the reply. Here is the URL http://www.myquizcoach.com/extras/quiz_JSON_template.php I do have the html stripped from the JSON output, and when I copy and paste into the JSON validator (@ http://jsonlint.com/) it comes back as valid JSON. Would it be beneficial for me to email you the script? Thanks

Thanks again Parker! I tried out a different way to use the JSON validator program at (http://jsonlint.com) by placing the URL the script was on and placed a ?reformat=compress after the URL. The validator returned a place on the string that had a carriage return placed in it. It was a database problem not the php I wrote. Thanks again for the help. Hopefully this will help out some others too. I don't know why going to the URL and copying and pasting the output into the validator didn't notice that. Thanks again.

@ Parker. As per our conversation above I can't figure out how to randomize the output for the answers. Here is a copy to my script I'm running (I'm a noob, so this might not be pretty to a pro, but it works with the quiz). All suggestions and criticisms are welcome. Thanks. <?php //Sample Database Connection Syntax for PHP and MySQL. //Connect To Database $hostname=; $username=; $password=; $dbname=; $question_table=wp_mtouchquiz_question; $answer_table=wp_mtouchquiz_answer; $yourfield = question; $question = question; $answer = answer; $connection = mysql_connect($hostname, $username, $password); $lastQuestionID = -1; $str = ; mysql_select_db($dbname, $connection); # Check If Record Exists $query = SELECT * FROM $question_table q, $answer_table a WHERE q.ID = a.QUESTION_ID AND q.quiz_id = 1 ORDER BY question_id ASC, correct DESC; $result = mysql_query($query); if($result) { $str .= {\childItems\:[; while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) { if($lastQuestionID != $row[question_id]) { if($lastQuestionID != -1) { // finish off the last two rows $str .= \imageURLSmallDevice\:\\,; $str .= \imageURLLargeDevice\:\\},; } $lastQuestionID = $row[question_id]; $str .= {\itemId\:\question . $row[question_id] . \,; $str .= \itemType\:\BT_questionItem\,; $str .= \questionText\:\ . $row[question] . \,; } // correct if($row[correct] == 1) { $str .= \correctAnswerText\:\ . $row[answer] . \,; } // incorrect if ($row[sort_order] ==2) { $str .= \incorrectText1\:\ . $row[answer] . \,; } // incorrect if ($row[sort_order] ==3) { $str .= \incorrectText2\:\ . $row[answer] . \,; } // incorrect if ($row[sort_order] ==4) { $str .= \incorrectText3\:\ . $row[answer] . \,; } {$str = strip_tags($str); } } $str .= \imageURLSmallDevice\:\\,; $str .= \imageURLLargeDevice\:\\},; // remove last comma $str = substr($str,'',-1); $str .= ] }; echo $str; } ?>