README.md
In qbr: Access the 'Quickbase' JSON API

qbr

The goal of qbr is to make it easy to interact with Quickbase’s JSON API.

You can install the development version of qbr like so:

 library(devtools)
 install_github("BHII-KSC/qbr")

| API page | Function | Description | |:---|:---|:---| | Users | get_users | Returns a tibble with details of each user in an account | | User token | clone_token | Copy a usertoken | | User token | deactivate_token | Deactivate a usertoken | | User token | delete_token | Delete a usertoken | | Apps | get_app | Get metadata for an app | | Apps | copy_app | Copy an app | | Apps | delete_app | Delete an app | | Apps | get_app_events | Returns a tibble of triggerable events | | Tables | get_tables | Get metadata for all tables in an app | | Fields | get_fields | Get metadata for all fields in a table | | Fields | delete_fields | Delete one or more fields in a table | | Reports | get_report | Returns a named list of metadata for the specified report | | Reports | get_reports | Returns a tibble of metadata for each report in a table | | Reports | run_report | Returns a tibble containing all data in the specified report | | Records | delete_records | Deletes records matching query conditions | | Records | update_records | Inserts and/or updates record(s) | | Records | query_records | Returns a tibble with data matching query conditions | | N/A | summarize_app | Get metadata for an app and its users, tables, and fields |

It is often cumbersome to manually download data from Quickbase to work on it in R. run_report makes it easy to extract report data via the Quickbase JSON API:

library(qbr)

# Get data from a Quickbase report as a tibble
run_report(subdomain = "bhi",
       auth = keyring::key_get("qb_example"),
       table_id = "bn9d8iesz",
       report_id = "7")
#> # A tibble: 10 × 5
#>    `Record ID#` `Date assessed` `Respondent type` Intuitive           Accessible
#>           <int> <chr>           <chr>             <chr>               <chr>     
#>  1            3 2018-12-19      "Evaluator"       "1 - Strongly disa… "2 - Some…
#>  2           28 2023-09-15      ""                ""                  ""        
#>  3           29 2023-09-15      ""                ""                  ""        
#>  4            1 2018-12-19      "Data analyst"    "5 - Strongly agre… "4 - Some…
#>  5            2 2018-12-19      "Data analyst"    "4 - Somewhat agre… "4 - Some…
#>  6            4 2018-12-19      "Evaluator"       "3 - Neutral"       "4 - Some…
#>  7            5 2019-11-27      "Data analyst"    "2 - Somewhat disa… "4 - Some…
#>  8           20 2019-12-04      "Data analyst"    "2 - Somewhat disa… "3 - Neut…
#>  9           24 2023-09-14      ""                ""                  ""        
#> 10           25 2023-09-14      ""                ""                  ""

Notice that this function returns a tibble even though the payload from Quickbase is non-tabular JSON. This function extracts data from the Quickbase report (recursively if needed to handle the API’s auto-pagination) and then makes the data tidy using ‘tidyverse’ principles.

If you don’t know the report ID of the report you want to retrieve data from, you can use get_reports to retrieve metadata about all reports in a table:

library(qbr)

get_reports(subdomain = "bhi",
            auth = keyring::key_get("qb_example"),
            table_id = "bn9d8iesz")
#> # A tibble: 7 × 13
#>   description        id    name  type  usedCount usedLast properties.displayOn…¹
#>   <chr>              <chr> <chr> <chr>     <int> <chr>    <lgl>                 
#> 1 ""                 6     Aspi… table        11 2024-09… FALSE                 
#> 2 ""                 5     Find… table        62 2023-09… FALSE                 
#> 3 ""                 1     List… table        36 2025-01… FALSE                 
#> 4 "Sorted by Date M… 2     List… table         0 <NA>     TRUE                  
#> 5 ""                 9     qbr … table         4 2024-09… FALSE                 
#> 6 ""                 7     qbr … table        66 2025-01… FALSE                 
#> 7 ""                 8     qbr … table        29 2024-09… FALSE                 
#> # ℹ abbreviated name: ¹properties.displayOnlyNewOrChangedRecords
#> # ℹ 6 more variables: query.fields <list>, query.filter <chr>,
#> #   query.formulaFields <list>, query.groupBy <list>, query.sortBy <list>,
#> #   query.tableId <chr>

It’s sometimes helpful to manage user tokens programmatically:

library(qbr)

# Clone a user token. The 'clone_name' must be unique. 
token <- clone_token(subdomain = "bhi", 
                     auth = keyring::key_get("qb_example"),
                     clone_name = "My new token",
                     clone_desc = "A token cloned by an R script")

# The token passed to 'auth' is deleted. Token supplied must be active.
delete_token(subdomain = "bhi", auth = token)
#> Token deleted

You can manage apps using the app functions:

library(qbr)

# Copy an app and print the new app's ID
app <- copy_app(subdomain = "bhi",
                auth = keyring::key_get("qb_example"),
                app_id = "bn9d8f78g",
                app_name = "R Testing copy",
                app_desc = "Used to test copy_app() from qbr package",
                keep_data = TRUE)

print(app$id)
#> [1] "butjcrxzi"

# Delete the newly created app
delete_app(subdomain = "bhi",
           auth = keyring::key_get("qb_example"),
           app_id = app$id,
           app_name = app$name)
#> $deletedAppId
#> [1] "butjcrxzi"

# Get the triggerable events of an app
get_app_events(subdomain = "bhi",
               auth = keyring::key_get("qb_example"),
               app_id = "bn9d8f78g")
#> # A tibble: 2 × 8
#>   type    isActive tableId  name  owner.email owner.id owner.name owner.userName
#>   <chr>   <lgl>    <chr>    <chr> <chr>       <chr>    <chr>      <chr>         
#> 1 webhook TRUE     bp5gg5b… Push… john.erdma… 5962446… John Erdm… jerdmann      
#> 2 webhook TRUE     bp84kms… GET … john.erdma… 5962446… John Erdm… jerdmann

This packages returns some field types slightly differently to a Quickbase report:

| Field type | Returned data type | |:------------------|:------------------------------------| | Multi-select text | Semicolon-separated text | | User | User’s email address | | List-user | Semicolon-separated email addresses |

Some extended ASCII characters (codes 128-255) cannot be properly parsed when converting from JSON at present, such as ’ (&#146). Reports containing text and rich-text fields are the most likely to suffer an error resulting from the use of these extended characters.

This package makes no attempt to convert data types. Number fields in Quickbase may well be interpreted in the resulting tibble as characters. The run_report function does provide a type_suffix argument to allow you to discern the intended datatype more easily.