Inquisit supports launching experiments from the command line shell. This enables you to launch an experiment directly from the Windows Command Prompt or the Mac OSX Terminal application. It also provides a way for other applications to run a specific Inquisit script using a specific subject and/or group id.
When launching from a command prompt, you can supply arguments specifying the subject id, script, and other arguments so that the script will simply be launched without opening the editor or prompting for a subject id. This enables Inquisit experiments to be directly launched from external software programs or shells scripts.
The command line syntax is as follows:
>"inquisitpath" "scriptpath" [options] Options: -s <subjectid> -g <groupid> -p <password> -m <monkey|human> -h
The definition of each parameter is as follows:
| inquisitpath | Quoted, fully qualified path to the Inquisit.exe file. For example, "C:\Program Files\Millisecond Software\Inquisit 6\Inquisit.exe" or "/Applications/Inquisit.app". |
| scriptpath | Quoted, fully qualified path to the script file to run. For example, "C:\My Scripts\script.iqx". |
| groupid | The group id for this session. |
| subjectid | The subject id for this session. |
| monkey | human | If "monkey" is specified, the automatic hydromatic systematic test monkey runs the script. Otherwise, if "human" is specified, the script runs in standard interactive mode. |
| password | Specifies the password use to decrypt an encryptd script file. The password must exactly match the password given when the encrypted file was saved. |
| h | Show command line syntax help. |
On Windows, the full path to Inquisit is usually:
"C:\Program Files\Millisecond Software\Inquisit 6\Inquisit.exe"
On Mac OSX, the full path is usually:
/Applications/Inquisit 6.app/Contents/MacOS/Inquisit 6
This path may vary if you have installed Inquisit to a different drive, volume, or folder.
If no other parameters besides the Inquisit path are specified, Inquisit will simply open.
If the full path to a script file is included in the command, Inquisit is launched, the script file is opened, the user is prompted for a group and subject id, and the experiment begins.
If the group and subject ids are included in the command, Inquisit is launched and the script is run using the specified ids. The group and subject id option are only valid when a script file is specified.
The following runs an IAT script using a subject id of 1000 and group id of 2 on a Windows command line.
"C:\Program Files\Millisecond Software\Inquisit 6\Inquisit.exe" "C:\MyInquisitScripts\IAT.iqx" -s 1000 -g 2
The following does the sampe on a Mac terminal prompt
"/Applications/Inquisit.app" "~/myscripts/IAT.iqx" -s 1000 -g 2
Inquisit supports automatic registration from the command line. This can be useful for automated admin installations on a large number of machines in a managed network. To auto-register, the deployment scripts can simply run Inquisit with the following parameters after the installation is complete.
The command line syntax is as follows:
>"inquisitpath" [options] Options: --register --userid <email> --password <password> --account <account name>
The definition of each parameter is as follows:
| inquisitpath | Quoted, fully qualified path to the Inquisit.exe file. For example, "C:\Program Files\Millisecond Software\Inquisit 6\Inquisit.exe" or "/Applications/Inquisit.app". |
| --register | Indicates Inquisit should register with key from the user account specified in the other parameters. |
| --userid | The email address of the user of the account to retrieve the key from. |
| --password | The password correspondeing to the userid. |
| --account | If the user is a member of more than one account, specify the account from which to obtain the key. If the user is a member of only one account, this parameter need not be specified. |