Expert: Andrew Hoffman - 6/4/2008

Question
Hi Andrew.  I work as a web designer/developer for a marketing company and I've been tasked with trying to figure out how to create a dynamically generated flow chart that generates when users fill out and submit a form.  The form will ask the user key questions and then the user's answers (once submitted) will appear in a box/div with a line pointing to the next related box (the final product will be something that look something like an organizational chart). I can create/code for the CSS and HTML, but not for the back end.  What type of back end would be needed to produce this type of graphical/organizational chart graphic (when the user submits the form?  Is this something I can easily accomplish with minimal programing knowledge or will I need to hire a programmer to create the back end or should I purchase software and if so what type of software? Any direction and or advice would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.

Answer
Hi Dionne,

I'm assuming you want to stay away from Flash, but if you know PHP or ASP, there are some free solutions out there.

Check out:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/10/18/charts-and-graphs-modern-solutions/
http://applestooranges.com/blog/post/css-for-bar-graphs/

With using, say, PHP, you can easily capture user input by posting a standard HTML form.  There are countless beginner tutorials that should have you understanding basic form submission techniques in about 45 minutes.

Then, once you have the user's input, it depends on which direction you want to go.  The above links should give you some viable options to choose from, but the choice you'll make will depend on the complexity of graph you need.  If you can keep with a pure CSS solution (after capturing the user input), do it.  But this way will probably seem too simple for more advanced graphical needs.

Hope this helped.

- Andrew