chiload: Load Chicago crime or arrest data

In rmoriedata: Integrated Datasets for the 'rmorie' Package

Load Chicago crime or arrest data

Description

Returns the bundled sample by default, or fetches the full dataset from the City of Chicago SODA API when full = TRUE. A complete fetch is cached as Parquet under tempdir() for the session; to keep it across sessions name a directory first, for example options(rmoriedata.cache_dir = tools::R_user_dir("rmoriedata", "cache")), and drop it with chiclr(). Nothing is written outside tempdir() unless you set that option. The result can be returned as a base data frame, a tibble, or written to a Parquet file whose path is returned – the last being the recommended bridge for Python (pandas.read_parquet).

Usage

chiload(
  type = c("arrests", "complaints"),
  as = c("data.frame", "tibble", "parquet_path"),
  full = FALSE,
  mirror = getOption("rmoriedata.mirror", NULL),
  limit = NULL,
  fraction = NULL,
  refresh = FALSE
)

Arguments

type	One of "arrests" or "complaints".
as	Return format: "data.frame" (default), "tibble", or "parquet_path" (writes a Parquet file under tempdir() and returns its path; nothing is written to the user's home).
full	If TRUE, fetch the complete dataset from Socrata (network, large) instead of the bundled sample; a complete fetch is cached as Parquet (see Description).
mirror	Optional base URL of an r-universe/drat mirror to try before Socrata (offline-friendly fallback). Defaults to getOption("rmoriedata.mirror"). The mirror's <type>_full.parquet must use snappy or no compression and data pages v1: the package's own reader supports nothing else.
limit	Optional row cap. For a full = TRUE fetch it is passed to the Socrata $limit parameter (a bounded fetch skips the mirror and is never written to the full-dataset cache); otherwise it keeps the first limit rows of the bundled sample. Default NULL fetches everything.
fraction	Optional share of the dataset, in (0, 1], for a full = TRUE fetch: the live row count is looked up and limit is set to ceiling(total * fraction) (of the bundled sample's rows otherwise). Give either fraction or limit, not both.
refresh	If TRUE, ignore the cache of the complete dataset and fetch it again (the cache is rewritten). A cache file that cannot be read is discarded and refetched regardless.

Details

Parquet I/O uses this package's own native codec (R/aaa_parquet.R), so no arrow install is required.

Value

A data.frame/tibble, or a length-1 character Parquet path when as = "parquet_path".

Examples

# `type` selects the dataset; the bundled sample is returned by default.
comp <- chiload("complaints") # reported incidents
arr <- chiload("arrests") # arrests
nrow(comp)
nrow(arr)
head(sort(table(comp$primary_type), decreasing = TRUE), 5)

# `as = "tibble"` returns a tibble when the package is installed.
if (requireNamespace("tibble", quietly = TRUE)) {
  tb <- chiload("complaints", as = "tibble")
  class(tb)
}


# `as = "parquet_path"` writes a Parquet file and returns its path --
# the recommended bridge to Python (pandas.read_parquet). Offline: the
# bundled sample is written, no network.
pq <- chiload("arrests", as = "parquet_path")
file.exists(pq)



# `full = TRUE` fetches from the live Chicago SODA API; `limit` bounds
# the request (seconds, not minutes) and try() keeps the example
# graceful when the service is unreachable. Omit `limit` for the
# complete multi-million-row dataset (cached, see Description); `mirror`
# tries an offline-friendly Parquet mirror first when set.
# `fraction = 0.001` takes a share of the dataset (0.1% of all rows)
# instead of a row count; the live total is looked up first.
big <- try(chiload("complaints", full = TRUE, limit = 200))
if (!inherits(big, "try-error")) nrow(big)

rmoriedata documentation built on Nov. 12, 2026, 9:06 a.m.