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  Belen 4:24 am on February 16, 2022 Permalink  

  A *service case study: Generating a PDF in your program with APITemplate.io 

  Users have reached out to us asking if it is possible to dynamically generate a customized PDF that they can share with the participants of their survey. While GuidedTrack does not have that functionality, you can easily integrate with external services via REST API to do so. There are a number of solutions available, such as APITemplate.io, PDF Generator API, and PDF Monkey. All three of them are paid services, although APITemplate.io and PDF Monkey both offer a free plan for that allows you to generate a small number of PDFs a month for free. On this case study we will show you how to configure and write a program that generates a PDF using APITemplate.io. Let’s say you have written the following program for a quick happiness assessment: -- Questionnaire *question: Enter your name *save: name *question: How happy are you today? *type: slider *answers: [1,2,3,4,5] *before: Not happy *after: Super happy *save: happinessScore *if: happinessScore >= 3 >>happinessEval = "you are quite happy" >>motivationalPhrase = "Keep it up!" *if: happinessScore < 3 >>happinessEval = "you are not very happy" >>motivationalPhrase = "Cheer up!" As you can see, four variables are generated: name, happinessScore, happinessEval and motivationalPhrase. We want to use the value of these variables to fill in a pdf that the users of our assessment can download. Here is how you would do it! Generating the PDF template Create an account and log into APITemplate.io Go to Manage templates and select New PDF Template to go to the template editor Choose to use the Visual Editor to create your template if the design of your pdf is simple or you don’t know how to write html code. For a more complex layout, create an HTML template Give your template a name, choose the sample that resembles most what you need and click on create At this point, you will automatically return to your templates dashboard and you will find there the template you just created: Click on Launch WYSIWYG Editor to edit the template. Use it as a word processor, and surround with double curly brackets the name of any variable that will be received from your program. For example, our template below has four variables: name, happinessScore, happinessEval and motivationalPhrase: Go to the JSON tab to generate a JSON object with some test values so that you can see the template in action. This is the JSON object we have created for our example: { "name": "Willie", "happinessScore": "3", "happinessEval" : "you are quite happy", "motivationalPhrase" : "Keep it up" } And this is the PDF it generates: Now that you have a template ready, you can do the integration with GuidedTrack! Before you leave the APITemplate.io site, there are two things that you will need. One is your template’s id, which can be found in the tab Manage templates next to the template’s name. Then go to the API integration tab to locate your API key. Configuring the service Go to the settings>services tab in your program and create a new service with the following data: Name: URL: pdfGenerator https://rest.apitemplate.io/v2/ Click on + Add header and fill it up like this (using your own API key): Key: Value: X-API-KEY 801aNjA5NjozMTE0Sk9YaG9JH3BYanIwVkVzTGa Writing your program Here is the code to add to the program, after the variables have been generated, to connect with APITemplate.io: >>template_id = "d5e77b2b2a3b8d2c" -- Create pdf *service: pdfGenerator *path: /create-pdf?template_id={template_id} *method: POST *send: {"name" -> name,"happinessScore" -> happinessScore, "happinessEval" -> happinessEval, "motivationalPhrase" -> motivationalPhrase} *success >> pdfUrl = it["download_url"] >> transactionRef = it["transaction_ref"] >> status = it["status"] *error Sorry, we encountered an error while generating your pdf: {it} *set: pdfGenError -- Display pdf URL *if: not pdfGenError You can download your pdf here: {pdfUrl} First, we have created a variable named template_id that we initialize with id of the template we created in APITemplate.io. Then we call the pdfGenerator service, sending an association with the data to fill in the template. If all goes well, the object it will return the URL that the pdf can be downloaded from. Otherwise, it will contain an error message.

   
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  Belen 3:33 am on December 15, 2021 Permalink  

  Feature update – Using the keyword *for to iterate through the elements of a list 

  Going through the elements in a collection or association is now easier than ever! These examples will guide you in using the *for keyword: Looping through the elements in a collection >> farmAnimals = ["dog", "pig", "goat"] *for: animal in farmAnimals There is a {animal} on the farm! The code indented under the *for keyword will be executed as many times as elements there are in the collection farmAnimals (3 in the example). On each iteration, animal will be the element on the position of the current iteration.  The output of the code above is:  There is a dog on the farm!  There is a pig on the farm!  There is a goat on the farm!   Retrieving both the elements and their position inside a collection In the previous example we generated a variable (animal) that, on each iteration, was set to the element in that position. But there may be cases where you want to store also the iteration number. Look at the example below: >> highestPeaks = ["Everest", "K2", "Kangchenjunga"] Here are the highest mountains on Earth: *for: index, name in highestPeaks {index}. {name} The *for loop will go through the collection highestPeaks, setting index to the iteration number and name to the element in that position. This is what the output looks like:  Here are the highest mountains on Earth:  1. Everest  2. K2  3. Kangchenjunga In summary, when you are using *for to loop through the elements of a collection, you can either retrieve each of the elements in it using the syntax *for: element in collection or both the element and its position if you write *for: position, element in collection.   Looping through associations In this example, my friend’s birthdays are stored in an association. The key of each element is my friend’s name, and the value is the date that they were born: >> friendsBirthdays = {"Justin" -> "March 1, 1994", "Kim" -> "October 21, 1980", "Taylor" -> "December 13, 1989", "Beyonce" -> "September 4, 1981", "Michael" -> "August 29, 1958"} *header: My friend's birthdays *for: name, date in friendsBirthdays {name} was born on {date} Alternatively, you may only want to get the value of each element, without the key. Here is how you can do that: >> potluckSignup = {"Peter" -> "Deviled eggs", "Joan" -> "Hummus and carrots", "Kelly" -> "Cookies", "Andrew" -> "Pico de gallo"} *header: Potluck dishes *for: dish in potluckSignup - {dish}   Generate multiple pages using a *for loop Suppose you have a program where the user has been asked to enter their favorite restaurants, which are stored in the collection favRestaurants. The code below will generate as many questions as restaurants they entered: *for: restaurant in favRestaurant *question: What is your favorite food at {restaurant}?   Loop through characters in a text variable The *for keyword also allows you to go through all the characters in a string. For example, this is program displays a text variable called word letter by letter: *for: character in word *clear *header: {character} *wait: 2.seconds You could also retrieve the position of each character as well: *question: Enter a word and I will spell it out for you! *save: word *for: index, char in word *clear *header: The letter in position {index} is {char} *wait: 2.seconds

   
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  Belen 12:37 pm on November 6, 2021 Permalink  

  Feature update – Two-factor authentication and new documentation site 

  Here’s what’s new: Two-factor authentication Revamped documentation

  Two factor authentication Now you can enable two-factor authentication (2FA) on your GuidedTrack account. This will add an extra security layer to protect the code of your programs and the data your users generate. In order to do so, you’ll need to access your Profile page: Once there, go to your Account tab and you will find the button to enable two-factor authentication under Security. You need to have an authentication app on your phone or tablet. If you need to install one, we recommend Authy, 1Password or LastPass Authenticator. Follow the instructions on the screen to: copy or print the recovery code and store it somewhere that’s safe where it can’t get taken or lost. scan the QR code with your device, and finalize the setup by entering the numeric code generated by the app. After enabling two-factor authentication, you will be prompted to enter the code generated by the app in addition to your username and password every time you log into GuidedTrack from a new browser or device.

  Revamped documentation GuidedTrack’s documentation is now in https://docs.guidedtrack.com!  You can find it too clicking on Help -> Manual on GuidedTrack’s navigation bar, and the Search Bar results of the type “Help” are now linking to this site. This new site has a search engine and is much faster to load and more pleasant to read and use that the document we were using before. It has three sections: The GuidedTrack Manual, with detailed explanations of all the GuidedTrack features and lots of code snippets you can easily copy and paste into your own program. The Research Guide, which contains tips on how to design user-friendly studies, how to recruit, screen and reimburse study participants and how to share participant data across different platforms. You will also find code samples that you can customize to meet the needs of your survey. The Function and Keyword API, a quick guide with the syntax and examples for every function an keyword in GuidedTrack.