Companion Application for the 'surveydown' Survey Platform.
sdstudio
sdstudio is a companion package for building, previewing, and managing surveys built using the surveydown survey platform through a Graphical User Interface (GUI). The studio runs as a local Shiny web app and makes it easier to create, preview, and manage surveys without extensive programming knowledge.
Intro Video
Installation
Installing sdstudio:
# Option 1: install from CRAN
install.packages("sdstudio")
# Option 2: install from GitHub
pak::pak("surveydown-dev/sdstudio", ask = FALSE)
Make sure to install surveydown as well:
# Option 1: install from CRAN
install.packages("surveydown")
# Option 2: install from GitHub
pak::pak("surveydown-dev/surveydown", ask = FALSE)
Launch
Simply call the launch() function to start the studio:
sdstudio::launch()
Features
🏗️ Build Tab - Visual Survey Creation
- Drag-and-drop interface for intuitive survey construction
- 16 survey templates covering basic to advanced use cases
- Dual-pane editor with visual builder and code editor
- Real-time synchronization between visual interface and underlying code
- Undo/redo functionality for all editing operations
- Local/DB mode switching for local testing and database connection workflows
👁️ Preview Tab - Live Survey Testing
- Real-time preview of your survey as you build
- Responsive preview modes: Desktop (widescreen) and Mobile (375px) views
📊 Responses Tab - Data Management & Analytics
- Real-time analytics dashboard showing summaries of responses and local interactive data table
- PostgreSQL database integration with connection pooling
- GSSAPI encryption support with automatic fallback options
- CSV export functionality for data analysis
Templates
We currently have 16 templates to choose from. The default template contains a minimum basic structure for a clean start. You might also try the question_type template for a showcase of all question types, or try some advanced features with conditional_display, conditional_navigation, etc. For a full list of templates, go to the surveydown-dev GitHub site and search for any repo starting with “template_”.
Database Configuration
The studio supports flexible database connection modes:
# Auto mode (recommended) - tries GSSAPI first, falls back if needed
launch()
# Prefer mode - uses GSSAPI if available, plain connection if not
launch(gssencmode = "prefer")
# Disable mode - forces plain connection (useful for VPN environments)
launch(gssencmode = "disable")