R/ch_read_ECDE_flows.R

In CSHS-hydRology/CSHShydRology: Canadian Hydrological Analyses

#' Reads a file of WSC daily flows from ECDataExplorer (ECDE)
#'
#' @description Reads in a file WSC daily flows as returned from the Windows program ECDataExplorer, converts the Date,
#' and omits the last 3 lines as these contain the data disclaimer and not data.
#'
#' @param filename Datafile retrieved from ECDataExplorer.
#'
#' @author Paul Whitfield 
#'
#' @return Returns a dataframe with the last three rows removed:
#' \item{ID}{stationID}
#' \item{PARAM}{Parameter 1 for Flow 2 for Level}
#' \item{Date}{original charater string converted to date format}
#' \item{Flow}{Daily mean flow m\eqn{^3}{^3}/sec}
#' \item{SYM}{Quality flag}
#' 
#' @importFrom utils read.csv
#' @export
#'
#' @examples \donttest{
#' # Using a dummy file name as an example
#' mfile <- "04JD005_Daily_Flow_ts.csv"
#' mdata <- ch_read_ECDE_flows(mfile)}
#' 
ch_read_ECDE_flows <- function(filename) {
  mdata <- read.csv(filename)
  mdata$Date <- as.Date(mdata$Date, format = "%Y/%m/%d")
  cut <- length(mdata[, 1]) - 3
  mdata <- mdata[1:cut, ]
  # change "Flow,m3.c"   to "Flow" to deal with the difference in ECDE versions
  names(mdata)[4] <- substr(names(mdata)[4],1,4)

  if (names(mdata)[4] != "Flow") 
    message("Input data file format error")
  
  return(mdata)
}