Request

Information can be sent in to the server from the user either from a web form (as the questions in the survey), passed in with the web address URL or stored in a cookie. This, as well as other information about the incoming request can be retrieved using the Request object.

We will look into some of the properties of the Request object. All of these return values of the type NameValueCollection. This is a type that represents a sorted collection of associated String keys and String values that can be accessed either with the key or with the index (integer from 0). This means that their values can be referenced in the same way as you refer to values in an Array(go to About Arrays for more information), but also using their String key, for example:

var aValue = Request("arg");

This will look through all values sent in with the request to find a key that matches the name specified in arg and return the corresponding value. If there is no match for arg, null will be returned. This means that you can use the expression

Request("arg")!=null

to check if it exists before using the value returned.

Note: Survey links in hitlists can have parameters added to the link. Two functions are available to receive the value from the link; Request and UserParameters (go to UserParameters for more information). The function you must use depends on the link's “Link type” setting. Request() will only be able to retrieve the value from the hitlist link when "Link type" in the Hitlist Field Properties page is set to "Unencrypted URL parameters". Refer to the separate Reportal documentation for further details.

A more robust approach than using the Request object directly is to use the separate properties of the Request object to prevent naming conflicts. In this part of the documentation we will describe some of the most useful properties.

Note: Request and Request.Form are not supported by CAPI or AskMe App. Use RequestForm instead.

Request.Form

Request.Form

will give the collection of form values submitted using "POST".

RequestForm

RequestForm

This was created because Request.Form and Request are not supported by CAPI or AskMe App. RequestForm functions in the same way as Request.Form.

QueryString

Request.QueryString()

will give the collection of values supplied on the URL or from a form submitted with GET. If you want to send values into the survey with the url, they can be included after the question mark after project_ID.aspx, separated by ampersands (&), e.g.

http://survey.confirmit.com/wix/project_ID.aspx?variable1=value1&variable2=value2

The keys here are variable1  and variable2, so using the key variable1 as in

Request.QueryString("variable1")

with the url above will return the value value1.

Request Cookies

Request.Cookies

will return the cookies stored from the of the Forsta Plus server domain. It returns an HttpCookieCollection object (go to Cookies for more information).

ServerVariables

Request.ServerVariables

will give the information sent in the header or internal server values.

Here is a table listing an extract of the possible server variables in the collection returned from the ServerVariables property:

Variable	Meaning
ALL_HTTP	All HTTP headers sent by the client., with their names capitalized and prefixed with HTTP_
ALL_RAW	Retrieves all headers in raw form (the form they were sent to the server by the client).
CONTENT_LENGTH	The length of the content as given by the client.
CONTENT_TYPE	The MIME type of the request, such as www-url-encoded for a form being posted to the server.
GATEWAY_INTERFACE	The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) supported on the server.
HTTP_<HeaderName>	The value stored in the header HeaderName. Any header other than those listed in this table must be prefixed by HTTP_ in order for the ServerVariables collection to retrieve its value. Note that the server interprets any underscore (_) characters in HeaderName as dashes in the actual header. For example if you specify HTTP_MY_HEADER, the server searches for a header sent as MY-HEADER.
HTTP_ACCEPT	The MIME types the client can accept.
HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE	The languages accepted by the client.
HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING	The compression encoding types supported by the client.
HTTP_CONNECTION	Indicates whether the connection allows keep-alive functionality.
HTTP_COOKIE	Returns the cookie string that was included with the request.
HTTP_USER_AGENT	Returns a string describing the browser that sent the request. See below for an example.
HTTP_HOST	The host name of the server.
HTTPS	Returns "On" if HTTPS was used for the request and "Off" if not.
HTTPS_KEYSIZE	Number of bits in the encryption used to make the HTTPS connection. For example, 128.
HTTPS_SECRETKEYSIZE	Number of bits in server certificate private key. For example, 1024.
HTTPS_SERVER_ISSUER	Issuer field of the server certificate.
HTTPS_SERVER_SUBJECT	Subject field of the server certificate.
LOCAL_ADDR	The IP address of the server which is handling the request.
QUERY_STRING	Query information stored in the string following the question mark (?) in the HTTP request.
REMOTE_ADDR	The IP address of the remote host making the request.
REMOTE_HOST	The host name of the client making the request, if available.
REQUEST_METHOD	The type of the HTTP request made: "GET", "POST" or "HEAD".
SERVER_NAME	The server's host name,
SERVER_PORT	The port number to which the request was sent.
SERVER_PORT_SECURE	A string that contains either 0 or 1. If the request is being handled on the secure port, then this will be 1. Otherwise, it will be 0.
SERVER_PROTOCOL	The HTTP protocol and version in use on the server.
SERVER_SOFTWARE	The name and version of the web server software running on the server.

Sending in Values with the URL

Assume you have a pop-up survey that is triggered from pop-up scripts on several sites. You want to identify which site the respondents were surfing when the pop-up appeared. In the pop-up scripts you should use different survey links for the different sites, as below:

http://survey.confirmit.com/wix/<project ID>.aspx?site=1
http://survey.confirmit.com/wix/<project ID>.aspx?site=2
http://survey.confirmit.com/wix/<project ID>.aspx?site=3
http://survey.confirmit.com/wix/<project ID>.aspx?site=4

Insert a hidden single question source in your questionnaire. The answer list should have the different sites you use and codes that correspond to the values you use in the URLs, for example:

Figure 1 - Inserting a hidden single question source

To set this hidden question based on the values sent in with the URL, use the code given below in a script node at the beginning of the questionnaire.

f("source").set(Request("site"));

Alternatively, you can use the QueryString property:

f("source").set(Request.QueryString("site"));

Important
The script node with Request must be the first node in the questionnaire, because once the respondent moves to the next page, the values are lost.

Now source can be used for reporting, quotas, logic etc. in the same way as an ordinary question.

Recording respondent's browser version and operating system

The system does not automatically save information about the respondent’s user agent (browser version and type and operating system (OS)) into a survey. To get this information you must add a check function into the survey at a location before your respondents start to provide answers. For this you can use the function Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_USER_AGENT"). This will contain information about the respondent application name and version and the operating system.

If you have a hidden open text question with question id UserAgent, then the script will look like this:

var agentInfo = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_USER_AGENT");
f("UserAgent").set(agentInfo);

Variable UserAgent will then contain string values that will look like this:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/52.0.2743.116 Safari/537.36

More information about the different values returned can be found here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms537503(v=vs.85).aspx