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Custom Data Handler

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Jack Brookes edited this page Jun 3, 2021 · 7 revisions

If any of the current Data Handler (listed here) do not meet your needs (e.g. you wish to upload data to a different online service) then you can create a custom Data Handler. This would be used to handle all data operations UXF makes (e.g. saving trial results, tracker outputs, etc).

Note: If you wish to output custom data e.g. a custom text file, but are OK with the current Data Handlers, see DIY data collection.

Custom Data Handler Template

To make a new Data Handler, you must inherit from the DataHandler class and override the required methods. The methods required to override are:

  • HandleDataTable
  • HandleJSONSerializableObject (2 methods for each of the .json types, one with List<object> and the other with Dictionary<string, object> arguments)
  • HandleText
  • HandleBytes

Then, you can attach your script to an object and reference it in the Data Handlers field of the Session inspector.

Here is a template for a custom data handler that simply prints the data as text to the console:

using System.Collections; using System.Collections.Generic; using UnityEngine; using System; /// This is an example custom data handler. It implements the required DataHandler methods and just prints out data to the console.  /// You can copy this script, but do some other action instead of printing out the data. /// You can attach this script to a GameObject then reference it in the Data Handling tab of the UXF Session component. public class ExampleCustomDataHandler : DataHandler { public override bool CheckIfRiskOfOverwrite(string experiment, string ppid, int sessionNum, string rootPath = "") { return false; // You could write a condition to return true when a ppid already exists. } public override void SetUp() { // No setup is needed in this case. But you can add any code here that will be run when the session begins. } public override string HandleDataTable(UXFDataTable table, string experiment, string ppid, int sessionNum, string dataName, UXFDataType dataType, int optionalTrialNum = 0) { // get data as text string[] lines = table.GetCSVLines(); string text = string.Join("\n", lines); // here we "write" our data, you could upload to database, or do whatever. Debug.Log(text); // return a string representing the location of the data. Will be stored in the trial_results output. return "Data printed to console."; } public override string HandleJSONSerializableObject(List<object> serializableObject, string experiment, string ppid, int sessionNum, string dataName, UXFDataType dataType, int optionalTrialNum = 0) { // get data as text string text = MiniJSON.Json.Serialize(serializableObject); // here we "write" our data, you could upload to database, or do whatever. Debug.Log(text); // return a string representing the location of the data. Will be stored in the trial_results output. return "Data printed to console."; } public override string HandleJSONSerializableObject(Dictionary<string, object> serializableObject, string experiment, string ppid, int sessionNum, string dataName, UXFDataType dataType, int optionalTrialNum = 0) { // get data as text string text = MiniJSON.Json.Serialize(serializableObject); // here we "write" our data, you could upload to database, or do whatever. Debug.Log(text); // return a string representing the location of the data. Will be stored in the trial_results output. return "Data printed to console."; } public override string HandleText(string text, string experiment, string ppid, int sessionNum, string dataName, UXFDataType dataType, int optionalTrialNum = 0) { // here we "write" our data, you could upload to database, or do whatever. Debug.Log(text); // return a string representing the location of the data. Will be stored in the trial_results output. return "Data printed to console."; } public override string HandleBytes(byte[] bytes, string experiment, string ppid, int sessionNum, string dataName, UXFDataType dataType, int optionalTrialNum = 0) { // here we "write" our data, you could upload to database, or do whatever. string text = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(bytes); Debug.Log(text); // return a string representing the location of the data. Will be stored in the trial_results output. return "Data printed to console."; } public override void CleanUp() { // No cleanup is needed in this case. But you can add any code here that will be run when the session finishes. } }

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