Amazon Mechanical Turk SDK for Java
About this SDK
The goals of the SDK are:- To abstract you from the "muck" of using web services
- To simplify using the various Amazon Mechanical Turk APIs
- To allow you to focus more on solving the business problem and less on managing technical details
About the Open Source Project
Visit the Amazon Mechanical Turk SDK for Java project homepage. We believe that the developer community is an integral part of making Mechanical Turk easier to use for everyone. Releasing the code to the open source community is the first step in creating an environment of innovation and collaboration with our customers.Features and Benefits
The Amazon Mechanical Turk SDK for Java offers you the following features and benefits:
| Feature | Benefit |
|---|---|
| Access Amazon Mechanical Turk web services through easy-to-use Java APIs. | Increase productivity by avoiding web service "muck" like authentication, forming SOAP requests, XML parsing, etc. |
| Bulk load HITs via a Question Template File, an Input File, and a HIT Properties File. | Significantly reduce the amount of coding necessary to manage your HIT design and input data. |
| Output submitted results to a file. | Results can be easily viewed in a text editor or Microsoft Excel and can be easily parsed for integration to your backend system or into another HIT workflow. |
| Preview your HIT as an HTML file. | Designing your HITs takes less time since you can preview the look and feel without loading into Amazon Mechanical Turk. |
| Full QuestionForm validation. | Save development time by being able to validate your QuestionForm and receive detailed error messages on why your QuestionForm XML failed validation. |
Prerequisites
To use the SDK 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 the Java SDK 1.5.0 (JDK 5) or later. The SDK is not 100% compatible with JRE 6. You can download the SDK at the following website: http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index_jdk5.jsp.
- You must have Apache Ant 1.6.5 or later. The Amazon Mechanical Turk SDK for Java includes an Apache Ant script that simplifies building and running the samples as well as building the SDK itself. You can download Apache Ant at the following web site: http://ant.apache.org/.
Installing the SDK
The installation of the SDK and other required components is simple and requires minimal configuration.Installing the JDK
Follow the instructions on the Sun Java website to install the JDK. Instructions can be found on the download site: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/install.html. After installation, you must set your JAVA_HOME environment variable to point to your JDK installation location.Installing Ant
Follow the instructions on the Apache Ant website to install Ant. Instructions can be found at the following location: http://ant.apache.org/manual/index.html. After installation, you must set your ANT_HOME environment variable to point to your Ant installation location.Installing the Amazon Mechanical Turk SDK for Java
- Download the latest version of the Amazon Mechanical Turk SDK for Java from the SourceForge project.
- Unzip the downloaded file to your desired installation directory for the SDK.
- Configure the SDK to use your AWS identifier information:
a. Open the following file:
[SDK Installation Directory]\samples\mturk.properties
b. Set the following properties to reflect your AWS identifiers:access_key=[Your AWS Access Key]
c. Save and close the file.
secret_key=[Your Secret Key] - Set the MTURK_SDK_HOME environment variable to point to your SDK installation location.
