NEWS.md

In eurlex: Retrieve Data on European Union Law

eurlex 0.4.6

Minor changes

• minor changes to documentation
• cleaned up http calls code
• calls to elx_council_votes() and elx_curia_list() now fail gracefully
• .data replaced by quoted variables for tidyselect functions
• Internet-using vignettes moved to site-only articles

eurlex 0.4.5

Major changes

• breaking change: elx_run_query() now strips URIs (except Eurovoc ones) by default and keeps only the identifier to reduce object size
• where elx_fetch_data() is used to retrieve texts from an html document, it now uses by default rvest::html_text2() instead of rvest::html_text(). This is slower but more resembling of how the page renders in some cases. New argument html_text = "text2" controls the setting.
• new feature: elx_make_query(..., include_court_origin = TRUE) retrieves the country of origin of a court case. As per Eur-Lex documentation, this is primarily intended to be the country of the national court referring a preliminary question, but other countries are present in the data as well at the moment. Recommended to interact with court procedure
• new feature: elx_make_query(..., include_original_language = TRUE) retrieves the authentic language of a document, typically a court case

Minor changes

• new feature: elx_make_query(..., include_directory_code = TRUE) retrieves the directory code of the document in question rather than its label (which can still be retrieved using include_directory = TRUE). This is useful to distinguish identical labels in different directories

eurlex 0.4.4

Minor changes

• minor changes to vignettes and examples to reduce build time
• more stable connection through elx_curia_list()
• fun CRAN policy compliance stuff

eurlex 0.4.3

Major changes

• all date variables retrieved through elx_make_query(include_... = TRUE) are now properly named
• new experimental feature: elx_make_query(include_citations_detailed = TRUE) retrieves additional details about the citation where available; the retrieval is currently slow

Minor changes

• elx_make_query(include_directory = TRUE) now retrieves the directory code instead of URI
• minor clean up of internals
• vignette lightly touched up

eurlex 0.4.2

Major changes

• new feature: elx_make_query(include_proposal = TRUE) retrieves the CELEX of a proposal of a requested legal act
• the returned results from elx_make_query() no longer include previous versions of the same record (new versions typically fix incorrect or missing metadata). This reduces the number of duplicates previously appearing in the results

Minor changes

• elx_make_query(include_author = TRUE) now returns the human-readable label (institutional authors) instead of URI

eurlex 0.4.1

Major changes

• elx_fetch_data(type = "notice", notice = c("tree","branch", "object")) now mirrors the behaviour of elx_download_xml() but instead of saving to path gives access to XML notice in R
• retrieve data on the Judge-Rapporteur, Advocate-General, court formation and court-curated scholarship using new include_ options in elx_make_query()

Minor changes

• fixed bug in elx_download_xml() parameter checking
• elx_download_xml(notice = "object") now retrieves metadata correctly

eurlex 0.4.0

Major changes

• download XML notices associated with Cellar URLs with elx_download_xml()
• retrieve European Case Law Identifier (ECLI) with elx_make_query(include_ecli = TRUE)

Minor changes

• host of smaller code improvements in elx_fetch_data()
• more consistent and strict error generation across all server-interacting functions
• started adding unit tests

eurlex 0.3.6

Major changes

• elx_run_query() now fails gracefully in presence of internet/server problems
• elx_fetch_data() now automatically fixes urls with parentheses (e.g. "32019H1115(01)" used to fail)

Minor changes

• minor fixes to vignette
• elx_parse_xml no longer an exported function

eurlex 0.3.5

Major changes

• it is now possible to select all resource types available with elx_make_query(resource_type = "any"). Since there are nearly 1 million CELEX codes, use with discretion and expect long execution times
• results can be restricted to a particular directory code with elx_make_query(directory = "18") (directory code "18" denotes Common Foreign and Security Policy)
• results can be restricted to a particular sector with elx_make_query(sector = 2) (sector code 2 denotes EU international agreements)

Minor changes

• new feature: request date of court case submission elx_make_query(include_date_lodged = TRUE)
• new feature: request type of court procedure and outcome elx_make_query(include_court_procedure = TRUE)
• new feature: request directory code of legal act elx_make_query(include_directory = TRUE)
• elx_curia_list() has a new default parameter parse = TRUE which creates separate columns for ecli, see_case, appeal applying regular expressions on case_info

eurlex 0.3.4

Major changes

• new feature: request citations referenced in target resource with elx_make_query(include_citations = TRUE); retrieved in CELEX form
• new feature: request document author(s) with elx_make_query(include_author = TRUE)
• XML parsing is now more efficient due to utilising (rather than stripping) namespaces (but still room for improvement)

Minor changes

• fixed bug in elx_label_eurovoc whereby resulting data frames contained list-columns

eurlex 0.3.3

Minor changes

• hotfix for critical bug in xml parsing that scrambled column with legal basis where this was requested

eurlex 0.3.2

Major changes

• improvement to legal basis harvesting thanks to help from Eur-Lex insiders
• legal basis results are now slightly more comprehensive and correct
• legal basis results now include a new column detailing the "suffix" (paragraph, subparagraph, etc.) in string form

Minor changes

• minor updates to documentation

eurlex 0.3.1

Minor changes

• elx_fetch_data() now prefers CELEX-based URLs (instead of Cellar URIs) as input, as they appear to yield fewer missing documents

eurlex 0.3.0

Major changes

• elx_fetch_data("text") now retrieves plain text from html, pdf and MS Word documents
• the type of source file is documented
• added handling of multiple files: all available text is retrieved and concatenated
• so far no support for images requiring OCR for text extraction for the sake of limiting dependencies and avoiding prolonging execution time

eurlex 0.2.3

Minor changes

• fixed serious bugs in elx_curia_list()
• fixed bug in elx_label_eurovoc()

eurlex 0.2.2

Major changes

• elx_council_votes() made fully operational

eurlex 0.2.1

Minor changes

• optimization, reducing dependencies, etc.

eurlex 0.2.0

Major changes

• addition of proposals and national implementing laws to possible SPARQL queries
• EuroVoc topics, retrievable in all EU languages, can now be included in SPARQL results
• new date options (force, end of validity, transposition)
• added elx_curia_list() to retrieve full list of EU court cases

Minor changes

• switch from XML to xml2
• SPARQL package dependency removed
• cascading language options for elx_fetch_data()

eurlex documentation built on Sept. 8, 2023, 6:22 p.m.