Protobi JSON API

Protobi defines each element as a set of parameters written in JSON syntax. An example is below:

{
    "key": "Q2",
	"displayKey": "Question 2.  Opinions",
    "title": "Do you agree with the following statements?",
    "children": ["Q2a", "Q2b", "Q2c", "Q2d","Q2e"],
    "format": {
       "1": "Extremely favorable",
       "2":  "Somewhat favorable",
       "3":  "Somewhat unfavorable",
       "4":  "Extremely unfavorable",
       "5":  "Don't know / no opinion"
    },
    "type": "number",
    "showBasis": true,
    "showStats": [4,5],
    "chartType": "Pie",
    "filter": {
        "Q1": 2
    },
    "roundby": null
}

This syntax may look foreign at first, but has the advantage of being both easily readable by computers in almost any language, and also readable by humans (at least with a little bit of introduction).

The basic idea is that an element is defined as a "hash" or "object" that defines attribute-value pairs. In the example above, "title" is one such key and "Do you agree with the following statements?" is its corresponding value.

Attributes are always strings. Values can be numbers (e.g. 10), strings (e.g. "Q2"), arrays of values (e.g. [4,5]) or other objects (e.g. see format above).

Each element is uniquely identified by an attribute "key". No two attributes in a Protobi project can have the same value of "key". And the value of "key" alone is enough to define the element, a lot of things can be assumed from its value, principally what data column to associate with the element.

A complete list of all JSON attributes

Below is a partial list of commonly used attributes with their allowable values and a brief description: