[RFE] Option to send user to external URL instead of /finish

[tylerburleigh]

I suggest an option to send the user to an external URL instead of /finish once they are finished with expfactory. Here are two basic use-cases:

• As a researcher, I want the user to submit their personally identifiable information (PII) to me using a different server, database, etc... in order to isolate that information from the information collected by expfactory. This can be done easily at an external site.

• As a researcher, I want the user to complete another task hosted on a different platform. For example, let's say I want the user to complete expfactory tasks, and then complete a survey on Qualtrics. At the moment, expfactory lacks some of the features found on survey platforms like Qualtrics, such as advanced question types, skip logic, display logic, responsive design, etc.

I added this feature to my fork here:

https://github.com/tylerburleigh/expfactory/commit/32287f75041a39ce7c4282731b2285650a95b41c

With this implementation, a URL parameter (goto_external) can be passed to a headless server, and if this parameter is passed, the user will be redirected there instead of /finish once they're finished with expfactory.

[vsoch]

this is a great idea! I think it would good to add via a build and runtime argument, like

EXPFACTORY_FINISH_URL="/finish"

that then populates the view. But I like this idea too - it looks like you would want it to go in as an experiment variable? if we do it that way, is there any reason would couldn't have a global variable that (anywhere in a battery) would redirect to a url instead of whatever would come next? (and then the external thing can choose to go back to the experiment, if desired.

[vsoch]

We could actually do both - have a "hard coded" finish url, and that is set when the experiment container is built, but then also an external_url parameter that can be picked up at any time. For the second, what about logic to get back to the experiment factory running?

[tylerburleigh]

I think the hard-coded option is a good idea. That would allow overriding /finish in a way that is less transparent to the user (something that can't be "mucked with," if that's a concern).

When you say "logic to get back to the experiment factory running"...
Do you mean for something like this?

- expfactory task 1 => external url => expfactory task 2

[vsoch]

for the "hard coding" I mean at build time there are a bunch of variables defined in the Dockerfile that go into the defaults for starting the server, and then still on start can be modified. For example, for a default database as the filesystem you would do:

EXPFACTORY_DATABASE="filesystem"

in the Dockerfile, but then when you start the container there is a --database argument that would override that. So the default here would be /finish, and then the user could either build with a different default, or define it at container start.

[vsoch]

see #106 for the first review! Going to be having dinner soon (I technically "took the day off today" which largely didn't happen, lol) so let's catch up / discuss over the weekend / next week.