Google Forms URL Generator

Generate URLs for Google Forms that are prepopulated and ready to submit.

Getting Started

The file src/URLGenerator.php includes all of the logic needed to build a prefilled and submittable Google Form urls. Feel free to pull it into your project however works best for you.

Generating URLs

The codebase is very lightweight and does not attempt to pull your form details from Google's APIs. That means you'll need to figure out the form field IDs on your own by:

Create a Google Form with all of the fields (and options) that you'll need.
Create a pre-filled URL filling in each of the questions.

You'll end up with a long url that looks similar to this:

https://docs.google.com/a/google-apps-account.com/forms/d/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxx_xxxxxxxxxxxx/viewform?entry.11111=Option+1&entry.22222=This+is+a+short+answer.&entry.33333=This+is+a+longer+answer.%0A%0AIt+can+have+multiple+lines.&entry.44444=Option+2&entry.55555=5&entry.66666=Column+1&entry.77777=Column+2&entry.88888=Column+3&entry.99999=2016-01-03&entry.101010=22:23

You can then start to associate the form field IDs (like 11111, 22222, and 33333 above) to the fields that you created in your Google Form. Once you have your field IDs, you can generate a pre-filled URL or submittable URL.

Pre-filled URLs

Pre-filled URLs will take the user to the Google Form where they can continue to made edits and then finally submit on their own when they are ready.

// This is the url from the prefilled form example above. Make sure it ends
// after the form ID and does not have a trailing slash.
$formURL = 'https://docs.google.com/a/google-apps-account.com/forms/d/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxx_xxxxxxxxxxxx';

// This creates the url generator instance we can utilize.
$generator = new GoogleFormsURLGenerator\URLGenerator($formURL);

// Create a prefilled url for your Google Form passing an associative array
// of field IDs and the values they are assigned.
$prefilledURL = $generator->prefilledURL(array(
    '11111' => 'My answer for this question.',
    '22222' => ['Multiple choice response', 'the other response']
));

// https://docs.google.com/a/google-apps-account.com/forms/d/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxx_xxxxxxxxxxxx/viewform?entry.11111=My+answer+for+this+question.&entry.22222=Multiple+choice+response&entry.22222=the+other+response

Submittable URLs

Submittable urls will not only prefil the values, but will also submit the form well and take the user to the submission response page. You generate them by passing params in the same format:

// This is the url from the prefilled form example above. Make sure it ends
// after the form ID and does not have a trailing slash.
$formURL = 'https://docs.google.com/a/google-apps-account.com/forms/d/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxx_xxxxxxxxxxxx';

// This creates the url generator instance we can utilize.
$generator = new GoogleFormsURLGenerator\URLGenerator($formURL);

// Create a prefilled url for your Google Form passing an associative array
// of field IDs and the values they are assigned.
$prefilledURL = $generator->submissionURL(array(
    '11111' => 'My answer for this question.',
    '22222' => ['Multiple choice response', 'the other response']
));

// https://docs.google.com/a/google-apps-account.com/forms/d/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxx_xxxxxxxxxxxx/formResponse?ifq&entry.11111=My+answer+for+this+question.&entry.22222=Multiple+choice+response&entry.22222=the+other+response&submit=Submit

Limitations

Date / Time Data

This library does not handle date or time transformations and will pass the data as is. You should convert all dates and times to strings in the following formats:

// year-month-date
$dateValue = '2016-01-25';

// Notice the hour is in 24 hour clock time (aka: military time).
$timeValue = '13:45';

"Other" Responses

This library also does not handle "Other" responses to multiple choice or checkbox questions. They require additional query parameters in the generated urls and I have not built in a way to handle them yet.

An example pre-filled url with an "other" response looks like this:

https://docs.google.com/a/google-apps-account.com/forms/d/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxx_xxxxxxxxxxxx/viewform?entry.11111=Option+1&entry.11111=__other_option__&entry.11111.other_option_response=Other+option+for+a+checkbox

In the above example, the option "Option 1" and an "Other" option of "Other option for a checkbox" are prefilled.

Running the Tests

This project uses Composer to handle dependencies for the project. Once you have Composer installed, you can run composer install to bring in the project's dependencies which are only used for testing.

You can run the tests for the application with vendor/bin/phpunit tests/.

If you'd like to watch the project files and rerun the tests when files are changed, you can install Watchman, then run:

watchman-make -p 'src/**/*.php' 'tests/**/*.php' --make=vendor/bin/phpunit -t tests

zhuiks / google-forms-url-generator