Qualtrics Backup App

Public web interface for backing up an entire Qualtrics account — no R required.

This app ports the workflow from giladfeldman/qualtrics_backup:

• .qsf survey definition files
• Response data as CSV
• YAML metadata per survey
• JSON question maps
• A survey catalog JSON file

SPSS .sav export is not included in v1 (CSV opens in Excel and SPSS).

Why this exists

The R script works well if you use RStudio, but many researchers do not. Qualtrics also blocks direct browser calls to its API (CORS), so this app uses a small, stateless proxy on Vercel while keeping your token and backup files out of storage.

The entire codebase is public so you can verify we store nothing. See SECURITY.md and PRIVACY.md.

Quick start (local)

npm install
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000, enter your Qualtrics datacenter ID and API token, select surveys, and download a ZIP.

Deploy

Deploy the qualtricsbackupapp folder to Vercel. No environment variables are required for user tokens.

Production: https://qualtricsbackupapp.vercel.app

npm run build

Project layout

app/                  Next.js pages and API proxy
components/           Backup wizard UI
lib/qualtrics/        Qualtrics API client
lib/backup/           Backup orchestration (retries, rate limits)
lib/zip/              Client-side ZIP builder

Output structure

backup.zip
├── survey_catalog.json
├── qsf/
├── data/response_data-SV_xxx.csv
├── metadata/metadata-SV_xxx.yaml
└── question_data/question_data-SV_xxx.json

Development

npm run lint
npm test

License

Same spirit as the original R script — use at your own risk, especially with large accounts. The app mirrors the R script's sequential export with 5-second QSF rate limiting and up to 5 retries per survey.