PERL scripts by William Schmidt


The scripts below were written by William Schmidt to 
support use of factorWiz and surveyWiz.
The first script below can be used to replace the
script referenced by the Action statement in
factorWiz and surveyWiz.  It will send its output
to a datafile named after the value of the "00exp" variable,
which is the Short Name that is also placed in the file as
the first variable.  The second script provides random assignment
of participants to different conditions.

PERL script for coding and saving data

A couple of issues:

1. Unlike the PolyForm script which places the data in a file 
named data.csv, available via FTP, this script will place 
the data on your local server in a file named after the first 
variable, 00exp, with an extension of .data.

2. This script adds a final column to the data output 
called "complete". Each data record should end with "complete" 
in the last position.  It doesn't indicate that all responses
are complete.  Missing values appear as "" in the data file.

How to use:

1. Ensure that you have perl installed. If you install 
perl5_004 or later then all is set; if you install 
an earlier version, then you need also
get the CGI.pm perl module and install it as well...
http://stein.cshl.org/WWW/software/CGI/cgi_docs.html

2. Edit the script by replacing:

   i) the path to your operative perl executable in line 1
  ii) the URL to redirect users after accepting data in line 2
      (optional)
 iii) the path to the directory where your data files 
      are to be stored in line 3; 
      note the trailing slash after the directory name.

     Windows 95/98/NT and OS/2 users will have to use backslashes (\)
as separators in paths; MacOS users need colons (:) as separators.

3. Place the script in the cgi-bin directory of your web server; 
check that it is executable by your web server (i.e., for UNIX users: 
chmod ugo+rx accept.pl). 
	Test the script out by calling the URL directly -- If it is set
up properly, your browser should be redirected to the URL supplied 
in line 2 when you enter the URL of the script.


William C. Schmidt
Dept. of Psychology
Park Hall
SUNY at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY

http://or.psychology.dal.ca/~wcs

---------------------------PERL script below:

#!/usr/bin/perl
$redirect_to = "http://psych.fullerton.edu/mbirnbaum/decisions/thanks.htm";
$path_to_datafile = "/export/home/wcs/public_html/";

use CGI;
$query = new CGI;

#print $query->header;
#print $query->start_html(-title=>'Dump');

#timestamp the submission
($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst) = localtime(time);
$mon++;

#determine the data filename, open and dump data
$filename = $query->param('00exp');
open(INFO, ">>$path_to_datafile/$filename.data");

foreach $key (sort($query->param))
        {
        $value = $query->param($key);
        
        #filter out "'s and ,'s
        $value =~ s/\"/\'/g;
        $value =~ s/,/ /g;
        if ($value !~ /^pf/)
        {
                print INFO "\"$value\", ";
        }
        else
        {
                # filter out items that need to be expanded at submission time pf*
                if ($value =~ /^pfDate/)
                {
                        print INFO "\"$mon/$mday/$year\", ";
                }
                if ($value =~ /^pfTime/)
                {
                        print INFO "\"$hour:$min:$sec\", ";
                }
                if ($value =~ /^pfRemote/)
                {
                        print INFO "\"",$query->remote_addr(),"\", ";
                }
                if ($value =~ /^pfReferer/)
                {
                        print INFO "\"",$query->referer(),"\", ";
                }
        }
        
        #print "$key:$value
";
    }
print INFO "\"complete\"\n";
close (INFO);

print $query->redirect($redirect_to);
exit();

------------------------------------------------end of script

PERL script for random assignment to conditions

Here's a perl script you can use to randomly assign participants
to different conditions, including different random orders created
in factorWiz.

The experimenter makes a number of experimental pages and saves each one in
a separate HTML file. The format of the name is pagename followed by an
integer, followed by .html (e.g., form1.html, form2.html, form3.html ...).
Enter the number of unique forms as the value of the $numforms
variable on line 4 (e.g., 20). The root of the page names goes in line 3, 
and the URL of the directory where these pages are stored appears in line 2. As
before, line 1 is the path to the PERL executable on the server.

When the script is called it randomly redirects the user to one of the
form pages.

Try it at:
http://or.psychology.dal.ca/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/~wcs/assign.pl

You will see files not found messages, but note that repeated
clicks of the link call for different addresses.

-------------------- PERL script follows:


#!/usr/bin/perl
$redirect_to = "http://or.psychology.dal.ca/~wcs";
$root = "pagename";
$numforms = 20;

use CGI;
$query = new CGI;

srand;
$page = (rand $numforms)+1;
$page =~ s/\.(\d+)$//g;
print $query->redirect("$redirect_to/$root$page.html");
exit();

---------------------------end of script