Question About Image Uploads in iOS

[yunyanzhao]

Hi,

Thank you again for all your previous support and for the excellent resources with Esmira! They’ve been extremely helpful.

I’m currently piloting my project in Esmira and testing image data collection. While trying this on iOS, I noticed that the upload function links only to file storage rather than directly to the Photos library. For my study, participants need to upload screenshots, so direct access to Photos would be important.

Is there a way to enable direct photo library access for uploads on iOS?

Thank you!

[SelinaDev]

Thank you for pointing that out. I agree, that the item is a bit split in it's intention at the moment. User-facing it is described as photo upload, internally it's more handled as a generic file upload.
Within ESMira there is currently no way to enable direct photo access. I have looked a bit into the documentation of the used code, and if I understand it correctly, there is unfortunately no trivial way on our end to change the app to include photo access. It seems like we would need completely replace the file picker with a photo picker.
Now, as mentioned, the item is intended/presented as a photo upload item, so it might be worth to do that. However, we don't know if anyone is using that item for file uploads, so we want to be careful with just changing functionality of items. I will look into it, and we will discuss it internally.
Unfortunately for your study, even if we decide to change this, it will likely take some time. In the meantime, if it's feasible, you can instruct participants to open the screenshot in the gallery and save it to their files. That should make it accessible to ESMira.

[yunyanzhao]

Thanks for the clarification!

We’ll use the workaround for now and instruct participants accordingly. Please let me know if there are any changes regarding the photo picker (we’d definitely be interested).

Thanks again for looking into it!

[yunyanzhao]

#ame matching of images in the data file

Hi again,

I received some pilot data that included a photo upload question. The photos extracted from the media folder have filenames such as:

a2ZZaC0zaUdYLU1odHEvU05TU2NyMS0yMjAwMDA3Mw

(A screenshot of the filenames is attached.)

However, in the CSV data file, the image names appear in a different format, for example:

images/kGgP-YpRW-qbrG/SNSScr1_4-27000556.png

Do you know how I can match the uploaded image files to the corresponding individuals/participants in the dataset?

[SelinaDev]

Hi there,

it seems like there was a problem in decoding the file names. I recognize this as the way the images are stored on the server, and for some reason step translating the file names into the expected format must have been skipped. I will have to look into why that has happened.

In the meantime you can manually change the file names. Fortunately the file names are simply stored in base64, meaning you can recover the intended names. E.g., when entering the first file name at https://www.base64decode.org/ I was able to recover kfYh-3iGX-Mhtq/SNSScr1-22000073, which matches the expected pattern. If you change the name and add .png, you should be able to view them.

I am sorry for the extra work, but I hope that that helps.

Best,
Selina

[yunyanzhao]

Hi Selina,

Sorry for the late reply, and thank you for looking into this.
The platform is set up through the Center for Research Computing in our university. I have been accessing the data (CSV files and media files) using FileZilla and PuTTY because the webpage doesn't seem to work for the datasets.

When I tried to click on the datasets through Data→Data table→Questionnaires, it showed "Error: Not Found"; when clicking on Data→Data table→Zip and download media files→media.zip, it doesn't give any response. A photo is attached.

Hope this makes sense.

Thanks,
Yunyan

[SelinaDev]

Hi Yunyan,

I'm sorry that isn't working. I am not sure why that is. I'm actually a bit confused. I looked through the code where that error might come from, and at least in the current version it seems that that error message shouldn't be able to appear in that context. At least not as a response from the backend. Just to make sure, what server version are you using? If you open developer tools (Ctrl + Shift + I on most browsers), and then try to navigate there, can you maybe see any more specific errors popping up in the browser console? Do you have any other areas of the application that aren't working?

However, that explains the file naming problem. That is how the files are in fact stored on the server, and they only get renamed inside the ZIP, when that file is created. That is the step that I previously thought was skipped (which it technically was, if they were downloaded directly).

Best,
Selina

[JodliDev]

@SelinaDev
I was able to reproduce this error message by making sure that the url in FILE_RESPONSES in src/frontend/ts/constants/urls.ts:12 is not found (it is used in src/frontend/ts/sections/dataView.tsx:439). So it might be coming from the CSV library PapaParse or even from the underlying JavaScript API). But it is still very odd because admin.php clearly must be reachable or otherwise the whole admin interface would be broken. Maybe you can make more sense of it.

@yunyanzhao
Do you know how ESMira was installed (Docker or PHP)?
My working theory is, that you ESMira server was installed manually and during installation (or an update) some ESMira file were manually copied or changed, which is why your ESMira server is now in a (partly) broken state.

Do you have the "Error: Not Found" also on other pages or only on the data view for questionnaires?
Do you have this problem only for this one questionnaire or also for the others? And also for "Events" and "Web access"? Is it also broken in other studies?

[yunyanzhao]

I guuess it is a PHP file. A professor in my department helped me set up Esmira in the Center for Research Computing at Notre Dame. The web link starts with "http://lasf.crc.nd.edu/index.php?admin#admin", so I assume it was installed through PHP.

Yes. The "Error: Not Found" show up for all data pages.
Yes. I have three versions of questionaires, and they all have this issue. A screenshot is attached.

Thank you for looking into this!

-Yunyan

[JodliDev]

Ah my apologies, I worded the question about the installation badly. The backend is always PHP. But I meant if it was installed using Docker (which would mean that all files are basically guaranteed to exist) or copying the ESMira files into and existing PHP server (and maybe some files were not copied properly..?).

But I played around with your server. At least when having no permission, the admin.php seems to behave as it should when trying to access data files. So I am also unsure what could caused this issue...

I think the answers SelinaDev's questions would help most (the server version and the error messages in your developer tools). Maybe your PHP error logs from the time when you are trying to access a data file might be useful as well