PsychoPy Code Sync

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PsychoPy Code Sync is designed to enhance the manageability and editability of your PsychoPy experiments.

It allow you extract code components from the .psyexp file to standalone Python files, edit them in your favorite IDE, and reintegrate them back to the .psyexp file with just one click.

• ✅ One-Click Sync: From extraction to reintegration—all it takes is a single click.
• ✅ Out of The Box: Run it immediately without any setup or configurations.
• ✅ Open Source: Licensed under MIT. So you can directly put it in your project without any copyright concerns.

Why Even Bother?

• Utilize both your favorite IDE and PsychoPy builder.
• More readable Git history for code components.

Usage

Before use

WARNING: Before first try, make sure to backup your experiment file. And only run this script in your experiment directory when you are sure it works. Data loss will ruin your day.

1. Copy the code-sync.py file to your experiment directory, so it is on the same level as your .psyexp file. So it looks like this:

experiment/
├── *.psyexp
├── code-sync.py
├── ...

2. run it directly.

First Run (Extract All Code From .psyexp File)

If you run the script at first time, it will create several python files in your experiment directory. Each file corresponds to a code component that already in your experiment. It looks like this:

experiment/
├── my_experiment.psyexp
├── code-sync.py
├── code__routine1__code1.py
├── code__routine1__code2.py
├── code__routine2__code1.py
├── ...

In another words, it extract all existed code components from experiment file as python files. And it will not create python files for routine that has no a code component.

Upload (From Python Files to .psyexp File)

After you make changes to the python files, run the script again. It will update the python files' content in the experiment file. That is,

code__routine1__code1.py -> my_experiment.psyexp
code__routine1__code2.py -> my_experiment.psyexp
code__routine2__code1.py -> my_experiment.psyexp

NOTE: after you do that reload the experiment in the builder to see the changes.

Download (From .psyexp File to Python Files)

After you modify the code in the builder, simply delete the corresponding python file. The script will create a new python file with the updated content.

experiment/
├── my_experiment.psyexp
├── code-sync.py
├── code__routine1__code1.py
├── (deleted)
├── code__routine2__code1.py
├── ...

will result in

my_experiment.psyexp -> code__routine1__code2.py

The Python files

All python files will be synchronized with the corresponding code components in the .psyexp file with following exceptions:

• The code__preface.py will not be synchronized. It is use to hint the language server for code completion.
• Prologue section in each python file will not be synchronized. Put some hint to make language server happy. e.g. text = visual.TextStim(win=win). Then in following section you can get full code completion support.