oTree

  • oTree can be installed through pip. Open the terminal (Mac/Linux) or command prompt (Windows PowerShell) and type:
$ pip3 install otree
  • You can install oTree in your computer by using the terminal in Pycharm as well.
$ pip3 install otree
  • Upgrading/reinstalling oTree
$ pip3 install -U otree

  • Recommend upgrading every couple of weeks.

  • You might need to do the proxy server settings

  • In the Pycharm, you can open the terminal and install oTree as below:

$ set https_proxy address:password
$ pip install otree

oTree setup

  • From your command prompt, create your IGG project
$ otree startproject IGG
  • Move into the folder you just created
$ cd IGG

  • Run the server

  • Start your own terminal as a server.

$ otree devserver

Open your browser to http://localhost:8000/. You should see the oTree demo site.

To stop the server, press Control+C at your command line.

To create a new app, run

$ otree startapp app_name

Session configs are defined in settings.py

Heroku

Deploy oTree application to Heroku server

To upload the oTree application in a cloud server like Heroku is an important step to conduct the online experiments. Here, I am showing the steps that you need to fulfill to upload your application:

  1. Make sure your oTree application is working correctly locally.

  2. Create a Heroku account if you don’t already have one.

  3. Install Heroku in your Mac: If you are a Mac user, you can install Heroku application from the homebrew as follows:

$ brew tap heroku/brew && brew install heroku
  1. Upload an app in Heroku: To upload your oTree application to Heroku, first create an application name inside your Heroku account as below:

New…> Create New App

  1. Enter to the folder of your Pycharm which contains the application you are interested to upload to Heroku server:
$ cd appname
  1. Proxy settings if necessary Sometime institutional networks (e.g.; university, office, business) require some additional proxy settings to upload an application to Heroku. I am sharing the example of my institution.
$ export http_proxy="http://proxy.noc.kochi-tech.ac.jp:3128"
$ export https_proxy="http://proxy.noc.kochi-tech.ac.jp:3128"
  1. Log in to Heroku Now it is time to push your application to your Heroku account. To do so, you need to go through the following steps.
$ heroku login
$ git init
$ git add .
$ git commit -am "command message"
$ heroku git:remote -a appname
$ git push heroku master
$ heroku config:set OTREE_PRODUCTION=1

Your oTree application should now be deployed to your Heroku server. You can access it by going to the URL provided by Heroku.

Note: Sometime due to the inconsistency in version of Python in your computer and reported Python version in runtime.txt might be different. In that case, you might not be able to rung the oTree program in computer. To get rid from it, you can remove the runtime.txt from your PyCharm.

Necessary settings of Heroku to run small experiment

Go to Resources tab. Following Add-ons need to be included for a small size experiment (For instance, 30 participants in one session).

Heroku Data for Redis ..... Premium 0
Heroku Postgres ........... Basic

Go to Settings tab. Click on Reveal Config Vars. Ensure that you have following Key and Value.

Key........................Value
OTREE_ADMIN_PASSWORD.......set any password
OTREE_AUTH_LEVEL...........Demo
OTREE_PRODUCTION...........1

Setup of Heroku server to activate the paid plans

heroku restart;heroku pg:reset DATABASE --confirm appname

Note: “appname” should be replaced with the custom application name

Updated on: 2024-10-17