Apps & rounds

Apps

An oTree app is a folder containing Python and HTML code. A project contains multiple apps. A session is basically a sequence of apps that are played one after the other.

Combining apps

You can combine apps by setting your session config’s 'app_sequence'.

Passing data between apps

See participant.vars and session.vars.

Rounds

You can make a game run for multiple rounds by setting Constants.num_rounds. For example, if your session config’s app_sequence is ['app1', 'app2'], where app1 has num_rounds = 3 and app2 has num_rounds = 1, then your sessions will contain 4 subsessions.

Round numbers

You can get the current round number with self.round_number (this attribute is present on subsession, group, player, and page objects). Round numbers start from 1.

Passing data between rounds or apps

Each round has separate Subsession, Group, and Player objects. For example, let’s say you set self.player.my_field = True in round 1. In round 2, if you try to access self.player.my_field, you will find its value is None. This is because the Player objects in round 1 are separate from Player objects in round 2.

To access data from a previous round or app, you can use one of the techniques described below.

in_rounds, in_previous_rounds, in_round, etc.

Player, group, and subsession objects have the following methods:

• in_previous_rounds()

• in_all_rounds()

• in_rounds()

• in_round()

For example, if you are in the last round of a 10-round game, player.in_previous_rounds() will return a list with 9 player objects, which represent the current participant in all previous rounds.

player.in_all_rounds() is almost the same but the list will have 10 objects, because it includes the current round’s player.

player.in_rounds(m, n) returns a list of players representing the same participant from rounds m to n.

player.in_round(m) returns just the player in round m. For example, to get the player’s payoff in the previous round, you would do self.player.in_round(self.round_number - 1).payoff.

These methods work the same way for subsessions (e.g. self.subsession.in_all_rounds()).

They also work the same way for groups, but it does not make sense to use them if you re-shuffle groups between rounds.

participant.vars

If you want to access a participant’s data from a previous app, you should store this data on the participant object, which persists across apps (see Participant). (in_all_rounds() only is useful when you need to access data from a previous round of the same app.) Put it in participant.vars, which is a dictionary that can store any data. For example, you can set an attribute like this:

self.participant.vars['blah'] = [1, 2, 3]

Later in the session (e.g. in a separate app), you can retrieve it like this:

# the below line gives [1, 2, 3]
self.participant.vars['blah']
# or try printing:
print('vars is', self.participant.vars)

As described here, the current participant can be accessed from a Page or Player:

class MyPage(Page):
    def before_next_page(self):
        self.participant.vars['foo'] = 1

class Player(BasePlayer):
    def some_method(self):
        self.participant.vars['foo'] = 1

You can also access it from Group or Subsession, as long as you retrieve a Player instance (e.g. using get_players() or get_player_by_role(), etc.).

class Subsession(BaseSubsession):
    def creating_session(self):
        for p in self.get_players():
            p.participant.vars['foo'] = 1

You can test if 'my_var' exists with if 'my_var' in self.participant.vars:.

participant.vars is not included in the Excel/CSV data export, or in the “Data” tab in the session admin. If you want that, you can create a LongStringField on your player (for example, called participant_vars_dump) and then at the end of your session, assign:

self.player.participant_vars_dump = str(self.participant.vars)

(The same concept applies for session.vars below.)

session.vars

For global variables that are the same for all participants in the session, you can use self.session.vars. This is a dictionary just like participant.vars. The difference is that if you set a variable in self.session.vars, it will apply to all participants in the session, not just one.

As described here, the session object can be accessed from a Page object or any of the models (Player, Group, Subsession, etc.).

Variable number of rounds

If you want a variable number of rounds, consider setting num_rounds to some high number, and then in your app, conditionally hide the {% next_button %} element, so that the user cannot proceed to the next page, or use app_after_this_page.