SNSFdatasets: Download Datasets from the Swiss National Science Foundation

In SNSFdatasets: Download Datasets from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF, FNS, SNSF)

Download Datasets from the Swiss National Science Foundation

Description

Download datasets from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF, FNS, SNSF) in CSV format.

Usage

fetch_datasets(dataset,
               dest.dir = NULL,
               detect.dates = TRUE, ...)

compare_datasets(filename.old, filename.new,
                 match.column = "GrantNumber", ...)

read_dataset(filename, detect.dates = TRUE, ...)

Arguments

dataset	a character vector. When of length greater than one, datasets are only downloaded, but not read. Currently supported are: Grant GrantWithAbstracts Person OutputdataScientificPublication OutputdataUseInspired OutputdataPublicCommunication OutputdataCollaboration OutputdataAcademicEvent OutputdataAward OutputdataDataSet OutputdataKnowledgeTransferEvent
dest.dir	a directory; if NULL, a tempdir is used
detect.dates	logical: if TRUE, columns consisting of entries such as 2000-10-31T00:00:00Z are converted to Date; empty rows in such columns are ignored and become NA
filename.old	string: the filename
filename.new	string: the filename
filename	string: the filename
match.column	string: the name of the column to use for matching entries in old and new file
...	arguments to be passed to download.file (for fetch_datasets)

Details

fetch_datasets downloads datasets in CSV format from the SNSF's website and stores them, with a date prefix, in directory dest.dir. If the latter is NULL, a temporary directory is used (through tempdir); but much better is to use a more-persistent storage location. If a file with today's date exists in dest.dir, that file is read, and nothing is downloaded. If more than one dataset is specified, those files are downloaded (if not current in dest.dir) but not read.

For downloading, function download.file is used. If it fails, fetch_datasets returns NULL. Settings can be passed via ... . See download.file for options; in particular, see the hints about timeout.

compare_datasets will match old and new dataset via the specified match.column and report

• added lines (in new, but not in old file),

• removed lines (in old, but not in new file), and

• changed lines (in both files, but with differing content).

read_dataset is a simple wrapper of read.table with appropriate settings.

Value

A data.frame for fetch_datasets and read_dataset. For compare_datasets, a list of three components named added, removed and changed.

Author(s)

Silvia Martens and Enrico Schumann

References

https://data.snf.ch/datasets

See Also

download.file; options (timeout, in particular)

Examples

## requires internet connection, and file may be large
dataset <- "OutputdataAward"

SNSF.dir  <- tempdir()  ## This is just an example.
                        ## In practice it's much more useful to
                        ## store files in a persistant location,
                        ## such as '~/Downloads/SNSFdatasets'.

data <- fetch_datasets(dataset = dataset, dest.dir = SNSF.dir)

## all award titles
table(data[["Award_Title"]])

SNSFdatasets documentation built on May 29, 2024, 8:47 a.m.