Feature: Interview survey form with multi select #5018

JoshDevHub · 2025-06-07T19:09:41Z

Because

We need a multi select form on interview surveys.

Note that this intentionally has a fairly constrained scope just to make sure we have the general behavior down for what we want. The form still looks kind of bad because little attention was paid to styling, validations aren't completely ironed out, and the feature is still hidden behind a feature flag.

This PR

Adds form for filling our the interview survey
Includes multi select form for interview concepts. Multi select uses slim select library (wrapped in a Stimulus controller)
Refactors feature flag checks in controller as more generic before_action wrapper
Includes new system specs to check core flow of submitting an interview survey form

QA

Enable the survey_feature feature flag. One way is to run bundle exec flipper enable survey_feature
Log into a test user account (for example: [email protected] with password as the password.
Visit localhost:3000/interview_surveys/new. There's no active link anywhere to this yet, so it must be visited by manually entering into the address bar
Fill out the survey and submit

Issue

Closes #4966

Additional Information

Happy path video:

2025-06-07.13-06-26.mp4

Pull Request Requirements

I have thoroughly read and understand The Odin Project Contributing Guide
The title of this PR follows the keyword: brief description of change format, using one of the following keywords:
- Feature - adds new or amends existing user-facing behavior
- Chore - changes that have no user-facing value, refactors, dependency bumps, etc
- Fix - bug fixes
The Because section summarizes the reason for this PR
The This PR section has a bullet point list describing the changes in this PR
I have verified all tests and linters pass after making these changes.
If this PR addresses an open issue, it is linked in the Issue section
If applicable, this PR includes new or updated automated tests

JoshDevHub · 2025-06-07T19:12:00Z

app/controllers/concerns/requires_feature.rb

@@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
+module RequiresFeature
+  def requires_feature(name, **)


I moved the feature flag stuff to this because I think it makes it much easier to use compared to filling up controller actions with Flipper checks. Also means the diff for removing a feature flag is basically deleting the requires_feature line in the relevant controller(s) and a little test cleanup.

Forwards keyword args so you can still do something like requires_feature :feat_name, only: :create or something if the developer wanted.

Love this ❤️

JoshDevHub · 2025-06-07T19:17:28Z

app/models/interview_survey.rb

+  def interview_concept_names
+    interview_concepts.pluck(:name)
+  end
+
+  def interview_concept_names=(names)
+    self.interview_concepts = names.compact_blank.map do |name|
+      InterviewConcept.find_or_create_by(name:)
+    end
+  end


This is one of the things that's maybe subject to change. Lots of different ways to approach this, but I ended up just using this virtual attribute way because it's very simple (and naturally keeps the controller very simple).

There are a few things to worry about with this though. Validating the interview concepts is one. Another is potential performance issues (and maybe race condition issues) around find_or_createing over a list of values (each one will be its own DB call). And also this should probably be wrapped in a transaction.

Might be better to kick this to a form object or think of some way to use accepts_nested_attributes_for, but I found that very unnatural for this specific usecase.

I really like this approach. Simple and clean!

You're right about accepts_nested_attributes_for not being right for this. I think needing to go through the join table is whats making it feel unnatural, I didn't really appreciate or take that fully into account that when we talked about the approaches before.

I think whether we stick with this approach or move toward a form object depends on how we want to handle validations. Form objects should give us more control over that, but it really comes down to what kinds of validations we think we should enforce or display.

Do you have thoughts on what those might be? Comboboxes seem tricky to validate to me - though maybe I’m just not being imaginative enough.

It could also be enough to just limit the input to 25 characters to match the limit we're setting in the backend validation.

Have you given any thought to this @JoshDevHub?

I think we'll need to either give feedback or prevent users from being able to submit concepts that have less than 3 characters or more than 25 based on the validations in InterviewConcept.

Would we be able to set character limits in SlimSelect?

app/views/layouts/application.html.erb

JoshDevHub · 2025-06-07T19:19:45Z

spec/system/interview_survey_spec.rb

+      find('div[aria-label="Combobox"]').click
+      find('div[class="ss-option"]', text: 'Rails routing').click


Unfortunately have to use this very manual flow to find and click elements. Maybe there's a way to add test ids to elements generated by slim select, but I couldn't immediately figure it out.

I think this is fine Josh. It's difficult to do anything else with libs that generate HTML internally.

app/javascript/controllers/multi_select_controller.js

KevinMulhern · 2025-06-11T12:09:31Z

spec/system/interview_survey_spec.rb

+      find('div[aria-label="Combobox"]').click
+      find('div[class="ss-option"]', text: 'Rails routing').click


I think this is fine Josh. It's difficult to do anything else with libs that generate HTML internally.

app/views/layouts/application.html.erb

KevinMulhern · 2025-06-11T12:11:07Z

app/controllers/concerns/requires_feature.rb

@@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
+module RequiresFeature
+  def requires_feature(name, **)


Love this ❤️

KevinMulhern · 2025-06-11T12:21:40Z

app/models/interview_survey.rb

+  def interview_concept_names
+    interview_concepts.pluck(:name)
+  end
+
+  def interview_concept_names=(names)
+    self.interview_concepts = names.compact_blank.map do |name|
+      InterviewConcept.find_or_create_by(name:)
+    end
+  end


I really like this approach. Simple and clean!

You're right about accepts_nested_attributes_for not being right for this. I think needing to go through the join table is whats making it feel unnatural, I didn't really appreciate or take that fully into account that when we talked about the approaches before.

I think whether we stick with this approach or move toward a form object depends on how we want to handle validations. Form objects should give us more control over that, but it really comes down to what kinds of validations we think we should enforce or display.

Do you have thoughts on what those might be? Comboboxes seem tricky to validate to me - though maybe I’m just not being imaginative enough.

It could also be enough to just limit the input to 25 characters to match the limit we're setting in the backend validation.

JoshDevHub · 2025-06-17T17:31:29Z

app/controllers/interview_surveys_controller.rb

+    if @interview_survey.save!
+      redirect_to dashboard_path, notice: 'Survey Submitted'
+    else
+      render :new, status: :unprocessable_entity
+    end
+  end


Reminder to self to change this to #save instead of #save! and also write a new system spec that exercises the validation failure code path here.

KevinMulhern

Not a showstopper, but I noticed that we lose the selected tags when submitting the form with validation errors. It could be a bit frustrating for users if they’ve added a lot of tags:

Screen.Recording.2025-07-20.at.22.15.53.mov

I’m not sure how feasible it is to repopulate the tags with SlimSelect, but might be worth exploring.

On a related note, I noticed we’re saving the concepts to the database even if the form validation fails - is that the intended behavior?

KevinMulhern · 2025-07-20T21:14:12Z

app/models/interview_survey.rb

+
+  def interview_concept_names=(names)
+    self.interview_concepts = names.compact_blank.map do |name|
+      InterviewConcept.find_or_create_by(name:)


Nit: Would it be worth normalizing the name here to help avoid duplicates?

Suggested change

InterviewConcept.find_or_create_by(name:)

InterviewConcept.find_or_create_by(name: name.downcase)

KevinMulhern · 2025-07-20T21:46:44Z

db/schema.rb

@@ -171,7 +171,7 @@

  create_table "interview_surveys", force: :cascade do |t|
    t.bigint "user_id", null: false
-    t.date "interview_date"
+    t.date "interview_date", null: false


Nit: looks like the migration might have accidentally been left out of the commit.

JoshDevHub added 16 commits April 12, 2025 13:32

Build basic form for interview surveys

accbd5a

Add slim-select library for multi select

95f4fbf

Implement multi select for interview survey form

06a98b4

Add has_many in user model for interview surveys

cc59dc5

Add inverse_of option to association

b72d570

Add form for filling out interview surveys

8227369

Use better stimulus semantics for multi select controller

7afb207

Use pluck in select input query

70e75e8

Add inverse association for interview_concepts

4cff548

Add system test for interview surveys with existing concepts

40c75f8

Refactor feature flag gating in controllers

30b5109

Remove test on get interview_surves/new

eb49abe

Add system test for interview surveys with new concepts

5a48fa3

Satisfy JS and ERB linters

0bdea06

Adjust virtual attribute logic

ef9a636

Make custom validation method private

293a9e3

github-project-automation bot added this to Main Site Jun 7, 2025

github-project-automation bot moved this to 📋 Backlog / Ideas in Main Site Jun 7, 2025

JoshDevHub commented Jun 7, 2025

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app/views/layouts/application.html.erb Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved

JoshDevHub commented Jun 7, 2025

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Merge branch 'main' into interview_survey_multiselect_form

8b32d9c

KevinMulhern self-requested a review June 11, 2025 11:53

KevinMulhern reviewed Jun 11, 2025

View reviewed changes

JoshDevHub commented Jun 17, 2025

View reviewed changes

JoshDevHub added 4 commits July 14, 2025 19:44

Add disconnect method to destroy slim select

93ed0ff

Remove CDN link for slim select styles

b214030

Use proper validation handling with interview survey form

a4c1bfe

Merge branch 'main' into interview_survey_multiselect_form

890aa80

JoshDevHub requested a review from KevinMulhern July 20, 2025 19:43

KevinMulhern requested changes Jul 20, 2025

View reviewed changes

github-project-automation bot moved this from 📋 Backlog / Ideas to 🏗 In progress in Main Site Jul 20, 2025

KevinMulhern reviewed Jul 20, 2025

View reviewed changes

		@@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
		module RequiresFeature
		def requires_feature(name, **)

		find('div[aria-label="Combobox"]').click
		find('div[class="ss-option"]', text: 'Rails routing').click

	InterviewConcept.find_or_create_by(name:)
	InterviewConcept.find_or_create_by(name: name.downcase)

Feature: Interview survey form with multi select #5018

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JoshDevHub commented Jun 7, 2025 •

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