babe-project

_babe project

basic architecture for browser-based experiments

Latest version: 0.0.23

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Table of contents

• Create an experiment with _babe
  • Install and import _babe
  • Experiment Initialisation
  • Views
  • Deploy configuraton
  • Progress bar
• Sample experiment
• Development

Create an experiment with _babe

Install and import _babe

Option 1: Install with npm (recommended)

1. Get _babe

You need to have npm installed in your machine. Install npm.

# create a folder for your experiment

mkdir my-experiment

# move to the experiment's folder

cd my-experiment

# initialise npm (create a package.json file)

npm init

# install the dependencies with npm

npm install babe-project --save

the npm installation process creates a folder (named node_modules) in your experiment's directory where the npm dependencies are stored. After successfully installing _babe, the node_modules folder should contain babe-project and its dependencies jquery and csv-js.

1. Add _babe

The babe-project folder includes the following three files that you can add to your experiment:

• babe.full.js - includes _babe functions and its dependencies (jquery nad csv-js), no need to install and import jquery and csv-js.
• babe.js - includes only _babe functions (jquery nad csv-js), jquery and csv-js have to be included separately.
• babe.css - includes babe styles.

Import _babe with a script tag:

add babe.full.js

<script src='path/to/node_modules/babe-project/babe.full.js'></script>

or add babe.js, jquery and csv.js

<script src='path/to/node_modules/jquery/dist/jquery.min.js'></script>

<script src='path/to/node_modules/csv-js/csv.js'></script>

<script src='path/to/node_modules/babe-project/babe.js'></script>

1. Update _babe

You can get newer versions of _babe with

npm update

Option 2: Download the babe-project (not reccommended)

1. Download the .zip from this repository

2. Unzip and move babe.full.js, babe.js and babe.css in the libraries/ folder of your experiment.

Your experiment's structure should look like this:

• experiment/
  • libraries/
    • babe.full.js
    • babe.css
    • babe.js

babe.full.js includes the dependencies that _babe uses (jQuery, and csv-js). There is no need to install and import jQuery, and csv-js.

babe.js includes only the _babe package, the dependencies should be installed separately for _babe to work.

babe.css includes styles for _babe experiments.

1. Import _babe in your main html file

the full version or no-dependencies version:

<script src="libraries/babe.full.js></script> or <script src="libraries/babe.js></script>

and _babe-styles:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="libraries/babe.css">

Usage

Once you have installed and included _babe in your files, you can start using _babe funcitons to create your experiment. You can use:

• babeInit({..}) - to initialize the experiment
• babeViews.view({..}) - to create an instance of a _babe view

Experiment initialisation

Use babeInit({..}) to create a _babe experiment.

babeInit takes an object as a parameter with the following properties:

• views_seq - an array of view objects in the sequence you want them to appear in your experiment. more info
• deploy - an object with information about the deploy methods of your experiment. more info
• progress_bar - an object with information about the progress bars in the views of your experiment. more info

Sample babeInit call:

$("document").ready(function() {
    babeInit({
        views_seq: [
            intro,
            instructions,
            practice,
            main,
            thanks
        ],
        deploy: {
            "experimentID": "4",
            "serverAppURL": "https://babe-demo.herokuapp.com/api/submit_experiment/",
            "deployMethod": "debug",
            "contact_email": "[e-mail]",
            "prolificURL": "https://app.prolific.ac/submissions/complete?cc=ABCD1234"
        },
        progress_bar: {
            in: [
                "practice",
                "main"
            ],
            style: "default",
            width: 150
        }
    });
});

Views in _babe

_babe views get inserted in a html element with id main, you need to have an html tag (preferrably div or main) with id="main"

Sample index.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        ...
        ...
        ...
    </head>

    <body>
        <-- ask the participants to enable JavaScript in their browser -->
        <noscript>This task requires JavaScript. Please enable JavaScript in your browser and reload the page. For more information on how to do that, please refer to
            <a href='https://enable-javascript.com' target='_blank'>enable-javascript.com</a>
        </noscript>

        <!-- views are inserted in here -->
        <main id='main'>
            Loading...
        </main>

    </body>
</html>

Included views

_babe provides several ready-made views which you can access form the babeViews object. The views use js template strings

• Trial Type Views (TTV):

  • babeViews.forcedChoice - binary forced-choice task
  • babeViews.sliderRating - slider rating task
  • babeViews.textboxInput - textbox input task
  • babeViews.dropdownMenu - dropdown menu task
  • babeViews.ratingScale - Likert-scale rating task
  • babeViews.sentenceChoice - text selection task
  • babeViews.imageSelection - click-on-a-picture task
  • babeViews.keyPress- press a button task
  • babeViews.selfPacedReading
  • babeViews.selfPacedReading_ratingScale

• Other Type Views (OTV):

  • babeViews.intro - introduction view
  • babeViews.instructions- instructions view
  • babeViews.begin - begin experiment view; can be used between the practice and the main view
  • babeViews.postTest - post-experiment questionnaire
  • babeViews.thanks - the last view that handles the submission of the results of creates a table with the results in 'Debug Mode'

Each _babe view function takes an object as a parameter with obligatory and optional properties. Here you can find more information about how to use the _babe views.

Custom views

You can also create your own views.

The views are functions that return an object with the following properties:

• name: string - the name of the view (the progress bar uses the name)
• trials: number - the number of trials this view appears
• CT: 0 - current trial, always starts from 0
• render: function - a function that renders the view
  • pass CT and babe as parameters to render()

Add the data gathered from your custom trial type views to babe.trial_data

Sample custom trial type view:

The templates use js template strings

babeViews.pressTheButton = function(config) {
    const _pressTheButton = {
        name: config.name,
        title: config.title, // 
        buttonText: config.buttonText,
        render(CT, babe) {
            let startTime = Date.now();

            const viewTemplate =
            `<div class='view'>
                <h1 class="title">${title}</h1>
                <button id="the-button">${button}</button>
            </div>`;

            $("#main").html(viewTemplate);

            $('#the-button').on('click', function(e) {
                _babe.trial_data.push({
                    trial_type: config.trial_type,
                    trial_number: CT+1,
                    RT: Date.now() - startTime
                });
                _babe.findNextView();
            });
        },
        CT: 0,
        trials: config.trials
    };

    return _pressTheButton;
};

const mainTrial = babeViews.pressTheButton({
    name: 'buttonPress',
    title: 'How quickly can you press this button?',
    buttonText: 'Press me!',
    trial_type: 'main',
    trials: 1
});

$("document").ready(function() {
    babeInit({
        ...
        views_seq: [
            ...
            mainTrial,
            ...
        ],
        ...
    });
});

Sample custom info view:

babeViews.sayHello = function(config) {
    const _sayHello = {
        name: config.name,
        title: config.title,
        render(CT, babe) {
            const viewTemplate =
            `<div class='view'>
                <h1 class="title">${title}</h1>
                <button id="hello-button">Hello back!</button>
            </div>`;

            $("#main").html(viewTemplate);

            $('#hello-button').on('click', function(e) {
                _babe.findNextView();
            });
        },
        CT: 0,
        trials: config.trials
    };

    return _sayHello;
};

const hello = babeViews.sayHello({
    name: 'buttonPress',
    title: 'Hello!?',
    trials: 1
});

$("document").ready(function() {
    babeInit({
        ...
        views_seq: [
            ...
            hello,
            ...
        ],
        ...
    });
});

Canvas

babe also includes a small library to create simple shapes as a picture for your experiment.

Check the canvas api for more information.

Deploy configuration

The deploy config expects the following properties:

• experimentID: string - the experimentID is needed to recover data from the babe server app. You receive the experimentID when you create the experiment using the babe server app
• serverAppURL: string - if you use the _babe server app, specify its URL here
• deployMethod: string - use one of 'debug', 'localServer', 'MTurk', 'MTurkSandbox', 'Prolific', 'directLink'
• contact_email: string - who to contact in case of trouble
• prolificURL: string - the prolific completion URL if the deploy method is "Prolific"

prolificURL is only needed if the experiment runs on Prolific.

Progress Bar

_babe provides the option to include progress bars in the views specified in the progress_bar.in list passed to babeInit. Use the names of the views in progress_bar.in.

You can use one of the following 3 styles (include pictues)

• separate - have separate progress bars in each type of views declared in progress_bar.in
• default - have one progress bar throughout the whole experiment
• chunks - have a separate progress chunk for each type of view in progress_bar.in

Use progress_bar.width to set the width (in pixels) of the progress bar or chunk

Sample progress bar

$("document").ready(function() {
    babeInit({
        ...
        progress_bar: {
            in: [
                "practice",
                "main"
            ],                  // only the practice and the main view will have progress bars in this experiment
            style: "chunks",    // there will be two chunks - one for the practice and one for the main view
            width: 100          // each one of the two chunks will be 100 pixels long
        }
    });
});

samples

Sample experiment

Here you can find a sample forced-choice experiment created with _babe.

Development

To get the development version of the _babe package, clone this repository and install the dependencies by running npm install in the terminal.

Workflow

branches:

• master - Current stable version.
• development - Development version. This is where new featues or bug fixes are pushed. When the version is stable, the branch is merged into master.

(1) Source files

• src/

  • babe-canvas.js
  • babe-errors.js
  • babe-init.js
  • babe-progress-bar.js
  • babe-submit.js
  • babe-utils.js
  • babe-views.js

• babe.css

(2) Create babe.js and babe.full.js

Option 1: Build the _babe package files while developing

Use npm run watch command from the babe-project folder to start a process which watches for changes in the files in src and builds (updates) babe.js and babe.full.js. This commands builds both babe.js and babe.full.js when a file in src is saved.

Option 2: Make changes to the files and then build the _babe files

Run npm run concat from the babe-project folder. This command builds both babe.js and babe.full.js.

(3) Merge into master

• include a changelog information in the README
• merge to master
• update the version of _babe in package.json

(4) Publish to npm

Run npm publish from the babe-project folder to publish the new version of _babe.