# Letting users create forms using web interface

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/letting-users-create-forms-using-web-interface/158926>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [January 29, 2009, 3:13pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/letting-users-create-forms-using-web-interface/158926 "2009-01-29T15:13:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![joey-alva](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/bbe5ce/32.png) [@joey-alva](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/joey-alva)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2009, 3:13pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/letting-users-create-forms-using-web-interface/158926/1 "2009-01-29T15:13:31Z")

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Hi,

I am working on an RoR application and one of the features of the  
application would need the following functionality.

Any user should be able to create forms (or questionnaires). He should  
be able to specify (on a web-page) as many questions as he wants and  
each question would have an answer that could be: a text-field (possibly  
with restricted type of values, like only numbers), text-area, drop-down  
menu with options to select from, check boxes or radio buttons.

Other users would be able to see this user’s form and respond to it and  
the values would be stored in the database. Finally the user (poster)  
would be able to view (or download) all the answers entered by the  
various other users.

If you know of a rails plug-in or something else that can help me do  
this, please let me know. I really appreciate your help. Thank you.

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**Author:** ![joey-alva](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/bbe5ce/32.png) [@joey-alva](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/joey-alva)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2009, 5:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/letting-users-create-forms-using-web-interface/158926/2 "2009-01-29T17:16:06Z")

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Hi Joey,

Did you investigate into SMERF?  
[http://smerf.cascadia.com.au/](http://smerf.cascadia.com.au/)

ciao, tom

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![joey-alva](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/bbe5ce/32.png) [@joey-alva](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/joey-alva)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2009, 5:35pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/letting-users-create-forms-using-web-interface/158926/3 "2009-01-29T17:35:45Z")

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Hey Tom,

Yes I did look at SMERF. But it looks like the users won’t be able to  
“define” their forms in SMERF on a web-page. It involved defining forms  
using YAML that had rules which would not be easily followed by a  
lay-user who isn’t comfortable with syntaxes etc. Actually, in my  
application, I am in need of a normal web-page where the user should be  
able to define his form elements (questions).

I hope I am not wrong about SMERF.

Thanks for replying Tom. I really appreciate it. If you are aware of  
anything that does do this using a web-page, that’d be really great!

-J