In earthlab/qtoolkit: qualtrics-toolkit

How to Connect to the Qualtrics API with qToolkit

The qapi_connect function attempts an API connection to Qualtrics with the necessary credentials (org_id and api_key). These credentials can be passed one of three ways to the qapi_connect function.

Please note that the first method shown below is the preferred method! The other two options are available to use if you need them.

Add org_id and api_key to your ~/.Rprofile File

The .Rprofile file is a hidden file located in the home directory of your computer. If you add your qualtrics credentials to this file, then you can automagically connect to the qualtrics API and access all of your surveys, without having to pass additional information.

Modifying your .Rprofile file is preferred as it stores your credentials in a hidden file that you are not likely to push to github or drop box or some other more public facing api.

To modify your .Rprofile file,

1. open up your ~/.Rprofile file (depending on your distribution, this path may differ). You may find using shell or bash to find the file is preferred. Then place the following code into the file:

options(QAPI_ORG_ID  = "OrganizationId",
        QAPI_API_KEY = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz")

where QAPI_ORG_ID is your org_id and QAPI_API_KEY is your api_key.

Once your credentials are stored in the .Rprofile, you can call qapi_connect() with no parameters as the script will load the credentials from ~/.Rprofile.

HINT: TO find your .Rprofile file. Open terminal (on a mac) or gitbash on a pc. and cd to your home directory.

```{bash, eval = FALSE}

cd to your home directory

cd .

open r profile in your favorite text editor. below we use vim

vim .Rprofile

### Add an Auth File To Your `R` Working Directory

Sometimes you may be using different qualtrics instances with different authentication
for different projects. In this case, you can add an auth_file to a working directory
with unique credentials for that R working directory.

To use this option, create the `auth_file` in the current working directory and
add to it the same lines as you would add to your `~/.Rprofile` file above, like so:

```r
options(QAPI_ORG_ID  = "OrganizationId",
        QAPI_API_KEY = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz")

To load these credentials you call qapi_connect() with no parameters. The script will load the credentials from the auth_file.

By default, the auth_file the script looks for is .qapi_auth.R in the current working directory, but this filename can also be specified as a parameter in the qapi_connect() call, as shown below:

qapi_connect(auth_file = "~/.qapi_credentials.R")

Supply the org_id and api_key in the qapi_connect string

This method is the least preferred as it hardcodes sensitive API information into survey analysis scripts. This should only be used for testing purposes, or if the org_id and api_key you want to use differs from that stored in options()

qapi_connect(org_id = "OrganizationID",
             api_key = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz")

earthlab/qtoolkit documentation built on Feb. 3, 2022, 5:57 a.m.