Mechanical Turk Ruby Libraries (mturk)

== Description

Mechanical Turk Ruby Libraries (mturk) is a set of libraries and tools designed to make it easier for you to build solutions leveraging Amazon Mechanical Turk. The goals of the libraries are:

• To abstract you from the "muck" of using web services
• To simplify using the Mechanical Turk APIs
• To allow you to focus more on solving the business problem and less on managing technical details

== Usage

require 'mturk' @mturk = Amazon::WebServices::MechanicalTurkRequester.new puts "I have $#{@mturk.availableFunds} in Sandbox" @mturk_prod = Amazon::WebServices::MechanicalTurkRequester.new :Host => :Production puts "I have $#{@mturk_prod.availableFunds} in Production"

For more in-depth example code, check out the samples folder included in this distribution.

== Prerequisites

To use the Libraries and successfully run the samples, you must meet these prerequisites:

• You must have an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account. You can sign up at the {AWS web site}[http://aws.amazon.com].

• You must have an Amazon Mechanical Turk Requester account. Be sure to use the same e-mail address and password you used when creating your Amazon Web Services account. You can sign up at the {Requester web site}[http://requester.mturk.com].

• You must have Ruby 1.8.3 or later. You can download Ruby at the following web site: http://www.ruby-lang.org.

• You must have RubyGems installed and configured correctly for your Ruby installation. Review the installation instructions here[http://docs.rubygems.org].

  (Note: If installing RubyGems for the first time, you may need to restart your console to pick up environment changes. To execute code that is dependent on Ruby Gems, the command to execute is: "ruby -rubygems program_that_uses_gems". The "-rubygems" command line parameter should be a default parameter that is always included. To do this, Ruby can utilize the "RUBYOPT" environment label that should be set to "RUBYOPT=-rubygems". Please refer to documentation specific to your OS on defining environment labels.)

== Installation

1. Execute the following command: gem install mturk

   (Note: Some Unix-based systems may require root access to install Ruby libraries. You may need to execute the above command as the following: sudo gem install and enter in the password to successfully install the Gem)

2. Installation of the mturk gem will prompt to install the following dependent gems if not already installed:

   • Hoe
   • Highline

3. (Optional) Download and expand the corresponding tarball/zip file from the project homepage to an installation directory. This will provide you access to the source files, test files and sample code.

4. Configure the Libraries to use your Amazon Web Services authentication credentials by executing the following command: mturk

5. Verify your installation by running the automated tests by executing the following command in the installation path: rake test

== Running Sample Applications

1. Navigate to the samples directory of the installation path.
2. Run the various samples

== Comments, Questions or Feedback

If you have any comments, questions, or feedback concerning the Mechanical Turk service in general, please visit the {Amazon Mechanical Turk discussion forums}[https://forums.aws.amazon.com/forum.jspa?forumID=11]

== License

Copyright (c) 2007-2015 Amazon Technologies, Inc.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.