[solved] load loop items from .xtl sheet for questionnaire

Griff

Dear all,

thank you for this opportunity to ask.

For a questionnaire that I am using I would like to implement the possibility to easily change the questions items (eg. different languages). Is it possible to load 1. the instructions from a .doc and 2. the items for the loop from an .xl sheet instead of manually adding them?

I found the 'import' and 'text' functions, but I do not see how to implement it in the loop.

Kind regards

sebastiaan

Hi Griff,

Sure, you can read the contents from a text file and do all kinds of things with it. In your case, you probably want to set some variables based on the contents of a text file. Then you can use these variables to specify the contents of your form.

To give a general idea, let's assume that you have a file called form.txt in your file pool, and that it has a form title on the first line and a form question on the second. You can then read this file and set the variables my_title and my_question based on its contents, like so:

# Get full path to form.txt in the file pool
path = exp.get_file('form.txt')
# Open the file
f = open(path)
# Read file contents
contents = f.read()
# Split file contents by line and store as a list of lines
lines = contents.split('\n')
# Set `my_title` to the first line, and `my_question` to the second
exp.set('my_title', lines[0])
exp.set('my_question', lines[1])

Next, you can use the square-brackets notation in a form_text_input to indicate that you want to use [my_title] and [my_question] for respectively the title and the question.

In general, you would do something like this. But you'll have to adapt it to your specific situation, which will require some knowledge of Python:

• http://osdoc.cogsci.nl/python/about/#learning-python

And if you have a more specific question, feel free to post it here.

Note also that you generally use plain-text files (.txt, .csv, etc.), instead of .doc, .xls, or things like that. Plain-text is much easier to read and process. But Word and Excel can save in plain-text format, so this won't pose any difficulties.

Cheers!
Sebastiaan

Griff

Hi,
thank you so much for helping out.
( I was a bit distracted with other things, thus the late reply).
cheers!