DigLabTools

DigLabTools is a collection of tools to interact with the DigLab metadata collection standard based on RedCap surveys.

Installation

To use DigLabTools you need to have a Python installation available on your computer including the pip package. You can install DigLabTools from PyPI via pip install DigLabTools. Note that DigLabTools requires git. If git is not available on your system you can install it manually. When using conda this can be done via conda install -c anaconda git.

Generate an API token

To be able to access the metadata from a RedCap server an API token needs to be created. For this login to your local RedCap server and go to the API menu on the left pane. Here you can generate a personalized access token for your user account. Copy the generated token, you will need to add it to your DigLab project configuration in the next step.

Configure your DigLab project

You need to create a project configuration json file on your computer to store the RedCap API token you just generated. Use your preferred text editor to create a <project_name>.json file with the following content:

{
  "structure": "structure.csv",
  "customization": "customization.csv",
  "validation": [],
  "api_token": "<paste your API token here>",
  "api_url": "<put the url of your RedCap server here>/api/"
}

Replace the <...> entries with the corresponding values for your project. The structure, customization and validation entries are required for project building and not needed to download the collected metadata.

Usage

Downloading metadata

To download the metadata of a project you can use the command line tool RedCapBridge. Use the RedCapBridge --help to learn more about the different functions that RedCapBridge offers.

Building projects

The functions for project building, validation and control are only accessible via Python. Read the module documentation to learn more about these methods.