psynet-adaptivetesting

A minimal PsyNet experiment that illustrates integration of PsyNet with adaptivetesting.

Super quick installation instructions if your computer is ready to run PsyNet experiments

If you already have installed everything needed for running PsyNet and have successfully run other PsyNet experiments, all you have to do is:

git clone https://github.com/dfsp-spirit/psynet-adaptivetesting.git
cd psynet-adaptivetesting/
python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r constraints.txt    # This will get you PsyNet, Dallinger and their dependencies
pip install adaptivetesting
psynet debug local

This will start the web server and open the experiment dashboard in Chrome.

Installing PsyNet and preparing to run this experiment

Follow these instructions if you do not have PsyNet installed.

We highly recommend to run this under Linux and in a Python virtual environment using venv. This will spare you the hassle of setting up WSL2 and Docker under Windows. For final testing of your experiment before deploying it, we would recommend to run it in Docker once (again under Linux).

Quick install instructions for Linux

Make sure you have a recent Python version (e.g., Python 3.12) and the Google Chrome browser installed.

Then get python dev packages, a database server and redis. E.g., for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS:

sudo apt install vim python3.11-dev python3.11-venv python3-pip redis-server git libenchant-2-2 postgresql postgresql-contrib libpq-dev unzip curl

For Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, just replace python3.11-dev python3.11-venv with python3.12-dev python3.12-venv. For Ubuntu 20.03 LTS, just replace python3.11-dev python3.11-venv with python3.9-dev python3.9-venv.

Then setup the postgres database:

sudo service postgresql start
sudo -u postgres -i                  # opens a new shell as the database user 'postgres'
createuser -P dallinger --createdb   # add DB user dallinger with createDB permission. When asked for new password, enter 'dallinger' (twice).
createdb -O dallinger dallinger      # create database dallinger owned by user dallinger
createdb -O dallinger dallinger-import   # create database dallinger-import owned by user dallinger
exit                                     # exits the shell of user postgres, so you are back to your user
sudo service postgresql reload           # apply configuration

Install Heroku:

curl https://cli-assets.heroku.com/install-ubuntu.sh | sh
``

Now install the experiment from this repo, which will install dependencies like the PsyNet and Dallinger python packages:

```sh
git clone https://gitlab.gwdg.de/psynet_mpiae/psynet-adaptivetesting.git
cd psynet-adaptivetesting/
python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r constraints.txt    # This will get you PsyNet, Dallinger and their dependencies

Now we install extra dependencies of this experiment, which are not general psynet dependencies:

pip install adaptivetesting

psynet debug local --legacy

Note that the --legacy option ensures that Flask binds to all interfaces, in combination with the host = 0.0.0.0 directive we have in the config.txt file in this directory. Without the legacy option, PsyNet will only listen on loopback (IP 127.0.0.1), but then we cannot connect with ipads to our local deployment server. All of this is only needed because we run PsyNet offline on a laptop in schools with no internet.

Chrome should open automatically and display the PsyNet overview page. If not, open Chrome manually and connect to localhost:5000.

Select the Development tab and click New Participant to run the experiment.

Note: If you are running an older Linux version and your system Python is very old, you can install miniconda and use it to get a more recent Python, or use uv.

Other ways of installing

If you need to run this under Windows, please follow the full PsyNet installation instructions, available in docs/INSTALL.md. In that case, you will also want to have a look at the list of run commands in docs/RUN.md.

General information on the PsyNet framework

For more information about PsyNet, see the documentation website.

Troubleshooting hints

Problem: I am being asked for credentials I don't know when manually connecting to the PsyNet overview page at http://localhost:5000.

Solution: PsyNet uses a user and password to protect its overview page and provides these credentials to Chrome automatically on startup. If you connect manually, you will be asked for this information. The easiest way to get the information is to define it yourself in the config file ~/.dallingerconfig like this:

Create the file ~/.dallingerconfig and put these lines into it (it's in INI format):

[Dashboard]
dashboard_user = admin
dashboard_password = 12345

Restart the PsyNet server. Then use these credentials to login when asked.