Laravel 5 Quiz Project - php

Question

This is probably more of a conceptual question but I am trying to find the best way to make a view that displays one quiz question at a time and checks the answer.
Currently my MySQL table has the following columns: id, category_id, quiz_question, answer_one, answer_two, answer_three, correct_answer.
My controller uses the following to get the quiz questions:
$quizzes = Quiz::where('category_id',$category_id)->simplePaginate(1);
In my view, I go through the process of doing the asnwer ordering manually
{{$quiz->quiz_question }}
<a onclick="this.innerHTML='Wrong'">{{ $quiz->answer_one }}</a>
<a onclick="this.innerHTML='Right'">{{ $quiz->correct_answer }}</a>
<a onclick="this.innerHTML='Wrong'">{{ $quiz->answer_two }}</a>...etc.
and was probably just going to use JavaScript/JQuery to check for the right answer.
Conceptually this feels like a pretty bad way to do this and I am still not sure how to randomize the order of the answers if they are from the same DB table like this. Overall is there a better way to go about this (Display 1 quiz question, and display answers in random order, check without a DB query)? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Do not keep the answers on the client side in any form.
Instead, just get the questions and paginate it on the client side. If you absolutely need to validate answers one by one, then fire up AJAX requests.
Or you can just let the person attempt the whole quiz and post the questions with users' answers and validate them on the server side. Then you return the result/score/answers.
Regarding your query about checking without DB query, you shouldn't do it. If you absolutely need it then save answers in an object, rather than in the DOM. Again, it can't be any more "not recommended".
Edit:
You should first divide it into these tables. You can't randomize the order of display of the options without a hack from the first table.
And don't name the columns like answer_one, answer_two, answer_three, correct_answer. In this manner the only way to recognize the answer in by the column name correct_answer. Column name shouldn't give a hint about the correct answer. It should be stored somewhere else.
questions
id
question - the question body
categories
id
category - name of the category
question_categories (one question may belong to multiple categories)
id
question_id
category_id
options
id
question_id
option - option text
answers
id
question_id
option_id
Now what you do is you randomize the order of options
$questions = Question::where('category_id', $category_id)->
with(['options' => function ($query) {
$query->orderBy(DB::raw('RAND()'));
}])
->get();
To randomly order the options we used ORDER BY RAND().
Now you just send the option_id and can check if it is the correct answer on the server side.
Edit - 27th March
You can use the following models.
Question
QuestionCategory
Category
Option
Answer
You can use the following relationships.
Question belongsTo QuestionCategory
QuestionCategory belongsTo Category
Question hasMany Option
Question hasOne Answer
But creating a QuestionCategory model doesn't really scale well. So if you don't want to do that you can use Polymorphic relationships. You can use category table to store basically all types of categories, not just question categories. In that case, you need to modify the categories tables to add the type of taxonomy. If you don't understand any of this polymorphic relationship thing, please find it in the official Laravel documentation https://laravel.com/docs/5.1/eloquent-relationships#polymorphic-relations