R/download_mcod_dta.R

In mkiang/narcan: Helper functions for working with multiple cause of death data

#' Download the multiple cause of death data as a DTA file
#'
#' NBER hosts publicly available multiple cause of death data in several
#' formats (see source). This function downloads the specified year to the
#' specified folder in the DTA (Stata) format.
#'
#' @param year year to download (as integer)
#' @param download_dir file path to save downloaded data
#'
#' @return none
#' @export
#' @importFrom utils download.file
#' @source http://www.nber.org/data/vital-statistics-mortality-data-multiple-cause-of-death.html

download_mcod_dta <- function(year, download_dir = './raw_data') {
    ## Downloads the raw data (as a zipped dta) for specified year.
    ##
    ## Source: print(paste0('http://www.nber.org/data/vital-statistics',
    ##                      '-mortality-data-multiple-cause-of-death.html'))

    ## Create URL
    base_url  <- "http://www.nber.org/mortality"
    file_name <- sprintf('mort%s.dta', year)
    file_url  <- sprintf("%s/%s/%s.zip", base_url, year, file_name)
    dest_file <- sprintf('%s/%s.zip', download_dir, file_name)

    ## mkdir -p
    if (download_dir != './') {
        dir.create(download_dir, showWarnings = FALSE, recursive = TRUE)
    }

    ## Get
    utils::download.file(file_url, dest_file)
}