Name templates

Validation in datashuttle is by default restricted to the NeuroBlueprint specification. Any subject or session names that are not formatted correctly (e.g. not starting with “sub-” or “ses-” will be flagged.

However, it is also possible to add custom templates to validate against by defining template names using ‘regular expressions’.

For example, say you wanted your subjects to be in the form sub-XXX_id-XXXXXX where X is a digit (i.e. subject number with a 6-digit id.

We can define this as a regexp where \d stands for ‘any digit`:

"sub-\d\d\d_id-\d\d\d\d\d\d"

If this is defined as a Name Template, any name that does not take this form will result in a validation error. Name templates can include convenience tags. (@DATE@, @TIME@ or @DATETIME@.)

Set up Name Templates

Graphical Interface

Click the Settings button in the Create tab. Scroll down to the Template Validation section.

Clicking the checkbox will turn on Template Validation and these can be set for subject and session independent. If the input is left empty, no name template will be applied.

Fill in the subject or session name template—any changes will be automatically saved. These settings will persist across datashuttle sessions.

Python API

The set_name_templates() and get_name_templates() can be used to set and get current name template settings.

set_name_templates takes as input the name_template dictionary, which is formatted as below:

name_templates = {
    "on": True,
    "sub": "sub-\d\d\d_id-\d\d\d\d\d\d",
    "ses": None,
}


project.set_name_templates(
    name_templates
)

In the above example, validation with name templates is turned on "on: True. A template is set for the subject name, but no template is set for the session name.

Name Template placeholders

Placeholders (based on [regular expressions]) can be used to fill templates with yet-unknown values.

Any regular expression available in Python is permitted, but below we summarise the most useful:

Wildcard Single Digit:

\d can act as a placeholder for a digit.
e.g. sub-\d\d\d will allow any sub- prefix followed by three digits.

Wildcard Single Character:

.? can act as a placeholder for any character
e.g. sub-\d\d\d_id-.?.?.?.? will allow the id- to be made up for any 4-character id.

Wildcard Range:

.* can act as a placeholder for an unknown range.
e.g. sub-\d\d\d_id-.* will allow the id- to be made up of any length combination of any characters.