statesampler

A simple node.js server to sample from a rows of data in a Google Sheet to provide data for survey questions. We were motivated by the need to inform custom question scripts in Qualtrics surveys, although this code is independent of Qualtrics.

You can see a live demo here.

There are currently four sampling methods:

• standard-uniformly,
• "balanced-uniformly" relative to some max,
• exponentially-weighted samples away from large counts,
• and reciprocally-weighted samples away from large counts

The first is trivial to implement within standard javascript, although this is plausibly more efficient here because the server pre-loads all data in the sheet. A client needs only ask for one row at a time, and thus loads only those relevant to it.

However this server was really written to enable question generation when the number of times a row was sampled is important. If so, we have to maintain a "global state" across rows served requiring a central server.

Use

This server is setup to allow you to make (hopefully simple) API calls. Before you launch an experiment, you need to

1. Initialize a Google Sheets API object with an API key you get from enabling the sheets API in your google account
2. Load a particular sheet by specifying a spreadsheetId and range
3. Optionally load a header, from the same spreadsheet or a different one, used to encode responses
4. Specify a sampling method, the default being the "balanced-uniform" strategy

During an experiment, you can

5. Sample reviews one-by-one, returning data that can be used to construct questions in Qualtrics (during experiment)
6. Report client-side errors during question loads back to the experimenter (during experiment)

Easy Setup

You can run the interactive bash script scripts/serversetup.sh from a command line to make the calls associated with server setup (1-4 above).

There is also a python version, scripts/serversetup.py, under construction.

curl Examples

You can use curl from the command line to play around:

1. Initialize a Google Sheets API object with an API key:

$ curl https://my.server.com/statesampler/api/sheets/init -XPOST -H "Content-type: application/json" -d '{ "apikey" : "..." }'

2. Load a particular sheet by specifying a spreadsheetId and range:

$ curl https://my.server.com/statesampler/api/sheet/load -XPOST -H "Content-type: application/json" -d '{ "spreadsheetId" : "...-7KRloOBe3-4qUQ" , "range" : "..." }'

3. Specify a sampling method, e.g. uniform sampling:

$ curl https://my.server.com/statesampler/api/strategy/u -XPOST

4. Sample reviews one-by-one, returning data that can be used to construct questions in Qualtrics:

$ curl https://my.server.com/statesampler/api/sample

Qualtrics/javscript Fetch Example

I would only use javascript to get sampled reviews within Qualtrics questions. That is, I wouldn't use it to setup the data for the experiment, although you could within node.js with either other scripts or the interactive mode.

For that use case, a sample call might look like

Qualtrics.SurveyEngine.addOnload( function()
{
	// question index. change this in different questions, so we don't have to make multiple changes below. 
	// (it would be nice if this was more automated...)
	var questionIndex = 1;

	// get place to store custom HTML for rows sampled...
	var container = this.getQuestionTextContainer();

	// call sampler API's main routine
	fetch( "https://my.server.com/statesampler/api/sample" )
		.then( data => {
			// process data recieved as JSON data
			data.json().then( json => {

					// Replace question's text container with a custom format of the response 
					container.innerHTML = ...

					// store the Row number as embedded data so we have it later for response analysis
					Qualtrics.SurveyEngine.setEmbeddedData( 'R1' , json.Row );

				} )
			} , error => {

				// Dump error, if we can, to the server. Otherwise we have no window into client-side errors. 
				var postOpt = { method : 'post', body : JSON.stringify( error ) };
				fetch( "https://my.server.com/statesampler/api/error" , postOpt );

			} );
} );

This example is provided in scripts/qualtrics.js.

Setup

node Server

You need node.js and npm to install this server. Instructions are available here.

With node.js and npm you can install this package by running

npm install

in the repo directory. I run with

$ npm start
... do other stuff, until we need to stop with:
$ npm stop

To check for startup errors, you can run the following script:

$ ls -tlh log/error* | head -1 | awk '{ print $NF" size: "$5 }'

If everything is ok, you should see something like

log/error-2018-05-03T06-34-36.log size: 0B

In production, use a deployment tool like PM2 or systemd. I prefer the latter, and thus have provided templates for that. Make sure service/statesampler.service is correct for your deployment, copy into place with

$ sudo cp service/statesampler.service /etc/systemd/system

and reload/launch/enable:

$ sudo systemd daemon-reload
$ sudo systemd enable statesampler.service
$ sudo systemd start statesampler.service
$ sudo systemd status statesampler.service

Those steps (presuming service/statesampler.service is correct) are packaged in a script service/statesampler.deploy that can be executed by running

$ npm run-script deploy

or, if you like, run directly (but watch out for where you run it from).

Hopefully you don't hit errors. Create an issue if you do.

HTTPS and SSL Certificates

Qualtrics uses HTTPS and thus so must you to not generate mixed-content requests, which most browsers won't allow without client-side customization. I used Let'sEncrypt's free certbot tool to generate SSL certs that can be used for HTTPS. It is fairly easy to just follow the instructions.

Apache

To run with apache, modify the apache/vhost.conf and apache/vhost_ssl.conf files by entering your DNS name in place of my.server.com as well as the webmaster email address (if desired). These need to be placed in /etc/apache/sites-available and enabled with

$ sudo a2ensite vhost vhost_ssl

Or you can just replace the content in the default sites enabled for HTTP and HTTPS.

You also need to make sure the right modules are enabled with, e.g.,

$ sudo a2enmod ssl proxy proxy_http rewrite

restart apache

$ sudo systemctl restart apache2.service

and check for errors

$ sudo systemctl status apache2.service

You can run the script apache/setup.sh with your DNS name and webmaster email, like

$ ./apache/setup.sh an.address.com [email protected]

to make the default changes to apache. Note, though, that these .conf files presume some defaults you should make sure are appropriate for your environment.

License

Apache 2.0 with modifications. You are welcome to use this software under the normal Apache 2.0 conditions for non-commercial purposes. Contact the author for licensing for commercial purposes. See LICENSE.md.

Contact

[email protected]

wrossmorrow.com

web.stanford.edu/~morrowwr

www.linkedin.com/in/wrossmorrow