User needs to be able to submit a date

[ebdavison]

Date fields are needed so format validation can be performed rather than using short answer (single-line) and deal with various date formats.

[saschalalala]

I followed exactly the same approach I described at #71 (comment), just using date instead of float of course. However, the rendered input field is of type text. I looked up the django templates that are used by DateFields and it turns out, that they don't use <input type="date">, see https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/ref/forms/widgets/#dateinput (I think, because browser support/handling is still quite bad).

However, for this project, this problem leads to the question how to handle date and datetime input fields:

• Is this something that needs to be addressed via js?
• Is jquery the way to go inside this project and if yes would we add new jquery plugins?
• Or would it make sense to drop jquery in favor of ES6 (and a bundler/transpiler)?

I don't know yet, how javascript inside this project is used and structured and I think, this ticket isn't the place to discuss this, but I wanted to start the discussion here because the date field is somewhat like the initial problem for these thoughts.

[Pierre-Sassoulas]

I think that we do not have custom javascript, we're using what is in bootstrap (so jquery). Also, not a lot of it, nor anything complicated. It would make sense to drop it if it's stretched too far by a feature. To be fair my knowledge is not up to date on the subject, but the migration to another framework should be easy because there aren't that much different forms to render (6? 8 with date and float ?). I would gladly merge a full migration that replaces bootstrap/jquery, especially if you add vue.js for #85 .

[saschalalala]

I searched the templates for <script> tags and I think, you aren't using any javascript at all at the moment, is that possible? Is there a specific reason then for these 3 script includes? https://github.com/Pierre-Sassoulas/django-survey/blob/master/survey/templates/survey/base.html#L23-L25

However, I think, not having too much javascript inside the surveys themselves is a very good idea, and there is no need for a migration. At the moment, it would (if I didn't miss anything) be very easy to drop the existing javascripts and replace them with a single bundled javascript file.

In order to use third party applications like e.g. flatpickr (https://flatpickr.js.org/) I would suggest using a module bundler like parcel (https://parceljs.org/) or not using a bundler at all and serving javascript extensions from the static dir manually, because setting up webpack for a project without many javascript dependencies seems a total overkill to me.

Regarding your comment about #85, I would consider them two different topics. In my opinion, writing a visualisation page as an API consuming frontend application in Vue does not mean that Vue is the right tool for the surveys themselves.

[Pierre-Sassoulas]

Is there a specific reason then for these 3 script includes?

They are necessaries because some of bootstrap's CSS classes that we use rely on it. I could be wrong, but it's possible that the only thing for which it's used is the dropdown for survey parts.

So yeah I pretty much agree with :

setting up webpack for a project without many javascript dependencies seems a total overkill to me.

It was included in a project that used boostrap/jquery where it made sense at the time. I don't like changing things in the javascript because those interactions are not tested automatically and I don't use the project currently so bugs could go undetected. Do not hesitate to make things saner though :)

[saschalalala]

Ah, I found some of them in one of the test surveys

Thanks, I didn't know about that functionality yet. Well, then it makes total sense to keep these files and extend them with flatpickr. I'll have a look about how to integrate it without much hassle. Forget everything I wrote about parcel then :)