How can I implement user-friendly boolean logic in a web form GUI?
Currently I have a web application where a user can use dropdown lists to generate SQL SELECT statements like so:
Column Select Dropdown | Operator Dropdown (= != > < <= >=) | Value select dropdown
The user can do this multiple times, and the "filters" are currently all ANDed together.
I want to add the possibility of creating OR statements. I could very easily add ORs in the case where the columns are the same, but what about complex logic statements like
((A OR B OR C) AND (D OR E)) OR (F AND G)?
How can I let users create such statements in a user-friendly way?
EDIT: To specify, user-friendly for a general audience. Currently I work with developers that occasionally hand-code SQL queries for a non-technical client that needs specific information from our database. The goal is that this web app will remove the need for us to hand-code them by giving the client an easy-to-use tool to do it themselves.
EDIT2: Currently the app is not being used by end users. The only data I have as to its use are previous handwritten SQL queries and thus the kind of queries the client asks for. Given that I could simplify it (e.g. limit the users' ability to generate queries to the kinds of queries they tend to ask for), but I want to see if anybody has experience communicating boolean logic simply and completely in GUIs.
Thank you for your time.
Answer
There is a jquery plugin to do this, called QueryBuilder, which do this in an interesting way : http://mistic100.github.io/jQuery-QueryBuilder/
