Mechanical Turk: Using HTML in the API

Question

Question for anyone who's used Mechanical Turk: Is it possible to take an HTML template created on Mechanical Turk's website, and then create more HITs based on that template from the command line tools or API?

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According to the API docs, it's not possible to create new HTML and add it...from the API. However, what I want to do here is use a HIT template I already created. It would seem like there should be a way to use that template (and load up new data in the API), since Amazon already approved it and I'm using it for HITs already. But I haven't seen a way in the documentation to do so.

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The main reason I want the HTML is so I can apply styles that I can't apply by using a questions file. If there was some sort of "rich" question file, that might solve the problem.

Answer 1

You could post a job on Mechanical Turk to have a person take your template and insert your data into it for each HIT you want to create.

(yes, this is at least half sarcasm)

Answer 2

As far as I know, I haven't seen a way to use manually created questions from the API.

If you're planning on doing programmatic access, it may be easier to use the API in its entirety (i.e., specify your questions via XML and create HITs from that question):

http://www.codeplex.com/MTurkDotNet (.NET SDK)

The API is pretty easy to use, and there several code samples.

Alternatively, you can use the "External Question" question type which may be better suited -- you can host the entire question form yourself.