Pavlovia data file names changed suddenly?

I’ve been having an issue for a while where the participant ID is not saving as the beginning of the data file anymore. It was working fine, then one day (no changes to the program) it just had the experiment name and not the ID, which has made cleaning my data much more tedious. Now more recently, I have added two experiments to pavlovia and the data files are saving as several different names. Sometimes the data files just say something similar to “2023_20h25.23.667.csv” and others are saving as something like “HUFRCA2_2023-02-20_20h12.11.760.csv”. The participant ID is showing inside the data files, and the participants are receiving credit after they complete the experiment. So it seems like the ID/participant number is changing across the platforms correctly. It is only giving me the error when naming the data file.

My participants start in SONA, go to Qualtrics for consent, then Pavlovia, and back to SONA. I have been using the instructions posted on this forum on how to do that for a couple years now, and this past year I have been having the issues. I’m not sure what errors I may be making and would appreciate any help!

I’ve also been seeing this for some experiments. Has something changed in PsychoJS/pavlovia?

Hi @bjackson55 and @PsyTechMMU,

What version of PsychoPy were you using before and after you noticed the filename issue? There was a bug in PsychoPy 2022.1.0 to 2022.2.4 which caused the URL parameters to fail to update the data filename. If you are experiencing the same bug, I would try one of these solutions:

  1. For new experiments: Change your PsychoPy version to 2022.2.5. The bug should be fixed in this version. (it may also be fixed in 2023.1.0, but I have not tested the latest version yet). I would only do this for new experiments where you have not started data collection yet.
  2. For currently running experiments: Add the following code snippet in the Before Experiment section of a Javascript-only code component: util.addInfoFromUrl(expInfo); This should force the URL parameters to be read before filename creation. I would recommend this solution as a bug fix for experiments you are currently running.

Hope this helps,
-shabkr

Hi @bjackson55,

The issue is actually with the way that the latest version of Google Chrome is formatting their dates. Previously, the format was dd-mm-yyyy but now it is dd/mm/yyyy. The addition of the / means that the date is not allowed to be part of the filename (because of the illegal character /). This is why things appear to have changed overnight.

If you could ensure that you’re using the latest version of PsychoJS as suggested by @shabkr , then see if the issue still persists that would be really helpful. 2022.2.5 will be fine, I’m running this today and the issue has been solved for me.

Thanks,

Kim

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@Kimberley_Dundas and @shabkr, thank you for your help!!
I have a new program I am putting online today. I have gone to the settings and changed the Use Psychopy Version to 2022.2.5. At the top of the builder it shows PsychoPy Builder (v2022.2.4). Is this okay? Just wanted to make sure I have changed the version in the proper place to solve the issue!
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Hi @bjackson55,

This should be okay, but before running with real participants I would highly recommend completing a pilot run yourself to check that everything is as expected.

Let me know if you run into issues!

Thanks,

Kim