LimeRick

Bridge between R and LimeSurvey

This package is a LimeSurvey RemoteControl 2 JSON-RPC API Client for R.

Motivation

• need for a bridge that connects very closely two open source projects (R and LimeSurvey)
• need for an advanced tool that allow for:
  • quickly importing responses into R from active online surveys
  • automatically accessing properties of survey and questions
  • monitoring survey status and responses directly from R
  • adding new responses to a survey directly from R
  • simplifying workflow for reproducible analysis
    (by providing in advance structured data schema)
  • developing data products based on real-time declarative data collection
    (e.g. continuous online tracking studies)
  • collecting meta-data of respondents interactions with online surveys
    on unique low-granular level

Tutorial

Installing from GitHub

if (!require("devtools")) install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("k127/LimeRick")

Loading the installed package

library(LimeRick)
#> 
#> Welcome to LimeRick package version: 0.2.0
#> 
#> Package website: http://k127.github.io/LimeRick
#> 
#> Changelog: news(package = "LimeRick")
#> Package help: help(LimeRick)
#> 
#> If you find this package useful cite it please. Thank you!
#> See: citation("LimeRick")
#> 
#> To suppress this message use:
#> suppressPackageStartupMessages(library(LimeRick))
#> 
#> First you need to set login parameters and obtain a session key. 
#> See the lsGetSessionKey() function help page (?lsGetSessionKey).

Configuring access to a survey

# Set the LimeSurvey RemoteControl 2 JSON-RPC API URL
options(lsAPIurl = "https://survey.example.com/index.php/admin/remotecontrol")

# Set LimeSurvey credentials
options(lsUser = "LimeRickDemo")
options(lsPass = "LimeRickDemo")

Low-level API function calls vs. function wrappers

# Compare a low level API call …
lsAPI(method = "get_session_key", params = list(admin = getOption("lsUser"),
                                                password = getOption("lsPass")))

# … to this Higher level API call
lsGetSessionKey()

Setting a connection to a survey

# Get session key for the user and save it to the lsSessionCache environment
lsGetSessionKey()

# If you work with a specific locale at LimeSurvey you maybe want to set it
Sys.setlocale("LC_ALL", "Polish")

Listing available surveys

# List available surveys
(surveyList = lsListSurveys())

# Extract the ID of the first survey in the list
surveyID = surveyList$sid[1] 

Listing survey questions

questionList = lsListQuestions(surveyID, lang = "en")

Accessing survey or question properties

We can access all available question and survey properties. For example:

# Is the survey active? (Y - Yes)
lsGetSurveyProperties(surveyID)$active

# What is the main text of a given question?
lsGetQuestionProperties(13, lang = "en")$question

# Is the question mandatory? (Y - Yes)
lsGetQuestionProperties(13, lang = "en")$mandatory

Checking survey response summary

lsGetSummary(surveyID)

Export responses

d = lsExportResponses(surveyID, completionStatus = "complete")
tail(d)

Adding responses to the survey

# Show possible options for a particular question
ls_getAnswerOptions(questionID = 13, lang = "en")

# Create a response using question codes: surveyID+"X"+groupID+"X"+questionID
response = list('123456X1X12' = "LimeRick",
                '123456X1X17' = "Adding feedback directly from R",
                '123456X2X28' = "A2",# Academia
                '123456X2X29' = "174" # Poland
                )

# Add the above response to the survey
lsAddResponse(surveyID, response)

See also

• Limesurvey GmbH. / LimeSurvey: An Open Source survey tool /LimeSurvey GmbH, Hamburg, Germany. URL http://www.limesurvey.org