Shinyapp validator bat signal!

[Melissa Kline]

Hi Psych-Data folks:

Thanks to a pressing need for a validator in ManyBabies (the second project is reaching the pilot stage!), Mike Frank has implemented a prototype validator which could serve as the basis for a more general Psych-DS validator! It is closely based on the validator used for Metalab.

This validator is designed to be used by a larger group who are all creating datasets of the same type, so it would also be great for projects like PsychSciAccelerator.

The ManyBabies research community is in some ways an ideal test base for Psych-DS: they are super enthusiastic about collaborative science, and have a *very* wide range of backgrounds and expectations about how to work with data. And ManyBabies1 requires upwards of 100 hours of data cleaning work (data from 68 labs), so we are very motivated to do better this time :)

We're hoping to get this version usable fairly soon, which means that we need to prioritize usability first, reaching the full Psych-DS standard second. *However* I think this can provide us both with a target minimum-viable product: a validator that works for a fixed set of projects (For instance, forking the validator and adding a drop-down entry for a particular PsychSciAcc project would be straightforward), and a place to start with expanding out to the full Psych-DS case. 

In particular, the app is designed to cover the following cases:

(1) Choose from a few projects, each of which has 1-2 types of datafile available 

(2) Validate a single datafile (CSV for now ;) )

If anyone on this list is interested and able, Mike and I would love help working on this validator! (And for those of you who were working on the dataset-building apps previously, we'd love to make these complementary tools). There are some open issues for features already, and we can use help both generating more and implementing what's already there. 

Mike has requested that we make forks and submit pull requests - if you are at all unsure about how to do that, please feel free to get in touch with me. As always, writing instructions AND stopping by to tell us where you get stuck is equally valuable to writing code!

- Melissa

[Michael C. Frank]

Hi all, 

Thanks so much for help with this project! 

Just to clarify one thing, the "cases we cover": the idea is that this is a free-standing webapp (hosted by shinyapps.io) where you choose between specifications for different projects and use those project specifications to validate an uploaded CSV. 

That means that right now it might make sense to have e.g., a different instance for ManyBabies (which would host specifications for MB projects) and for other projects. 

Looking forward to collaborating!

best, 

Mike