Learn R Programming

<img src="img/logo.png" align="right" height="80"/ alt="dmpr logo">

Data Package Manager for R

Version: 0.1.9

Description

The R package for creating and installing data packages that follow the Open Knowledge Foundation's Data Package Protocol.

dpmr has three core functions:

  • datapackage_init: initialises a new data package from an R data frame and

(optionally) a meta data list.

  • datapackage_install: installs a data package either stored locally or

remotely, e.g. on GitHub.

  • datapackage_info: reads a data package's metadata (stored in its

datapackage.json file) into the R Console and (optionally) as a list.

Examples

Create Data Packages

To initiate a barebones data package in the current working directory called My_Data_Package use:

# Create fake data
A <- B <- C <- sample(1:20, size = 20, replace = TRUE)
ID <- sort(rep('a', 20))
Data <- data.frame(ID, A, B, C)

datapackage_init(df = Data, package_name = 'My_Data_Package')

This will create a data package with barebones metadata in a datapackage.json file. You can then edit this by hand.

Alternatively, you can also create a list with the metadata in R and have this included with the data package:

meta_list <- list(name = 'My_Data_Package',
                    title = 'A fake data package',
                    last_updated = Sys.Date(),
                    version = '0.1',
                    license = data.frame(type = 'PDDL-1.0',
                            url = 'http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/pddl/'),
                    sources = data.frame(name = 'Fake',
                            web = 'No URL, its fake.'))

datapackage_init(df = Data, meta = meta_list)

Note if you don't include the resources fields in your metadata list, then they will automatically be added. These fields identify the data files' paths and data schema.

Installing Data Packages

Locally

To load a data package called gdp stored in the current working directory use:

gdp_data <- datapackage_install(path = 'gdp/')

From the web

You can install a package stored remotely using its URL. In this example we directly download the gdp data package from GitHub using the URL for its zip file:

URL <- 'https://github.com/datasets/gdp/archive/master.zip'
gdp_data <- datapackage_install(path = URL)

Get Data Package Metadata

Use datapackage_info to read a data package's metadata into R:

# Print information when working directory is a data package
datapackage_info()

To-do for v0.2

  • datapackage_update for updating a data package's data and metadata.

  • Specify data variable descriptions in meta list.

  • Load inline data from the datapackage.json file.

  • Load data from a GitHub repo using GitHub usernames and repos.


Licensed under GPL-3

Copy Link

Version

Install

install.packages('dpmr')

Monthly Downloads

139

Version

0.1.9

License

GPL-3

Last Published

March 7th, 2016

Functions in dpmr (0.1.9)

datapackage_init

Initialise a data package from a data frame, metadata list, and source code file used to create the data set.
datapackage_install

Install a data package
datapackage_info

Return key meta information about the data package
meta_template

Template for datapackage.json